


Are We Yet Free Men?

by tb_ll57



Series: A Brother Is Born For Adversity [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Consent Issues, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, First War with Voldemort, Identity Issues, M/M, Pre-Series, Spies & Secret Agents, Trust Issues, Undecided Relationship(s), Werewolves
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-26
Updated: 2015-03-29
Packaged: 2018-03-15 08:43:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3440801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tb_ll57/pseuds/tb_ll57
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty-year-old Remus Lupin tries to keep the werewolves on the side of the light.  He's accepted it might cost him his life, but that's easier to reconcile than the other costs.  Even if they win, who will he be, after he's seen the depths in himself?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Most Fatal Thing A Man Can Do Is Try To Stand Alone

The room was small and spare. Peeling whitewash shivered in a bit of breeze from the crack in the window, fluttering accompaniment to the clack-bang of the wooden shutter just beyond the pitted glass. Remus stripped the bed and folded the limp sheet to rest on the sagging mattress. He rinsed the tea cup in the sink and left it upended to dry on the rack. And that was the last of it. Every sign that he'd ever lived here was undone, put away, erased. Only his bag waiting by the door was proof he'd ever been here.

He sat in the chair. There were grooves in the fabric over the arms, where a man's hands naturally fell. Dozens of hands before his, perhaps rubbing anxiously at the worn velvet, as he did now. He was paid through noon, though it was only nine, and he was reluctant to leave early. Hunger was a slight twinge in his belly, readily ignored, for now. Water would fill him well enough til luncheon. He rose to fill his cup in the sink, drank it down and another after, and then it was sitting again, twitching his ragged thumbnail against his pointer finger and thinking of nothing, no matter how he tried to focus. Everything was scattered and flittering. He'd known for a month it was come to this, he'd planned and plotted to the precise inch. There was nothing left to think about.

Like the empty state of his vault in Gringott's. Twenty-six Galleons, that was all he had to his name. Two years of hard saving, that, and he'd known since Hogwarts how long he could afford the trappings of a normal life. Two years, no job too small, not if it earned. He'd swept floors, brewed potions, served bar, stocked groceries, loaded boxes, scooped feed for training owls. Twenty-six Galleons. He thought sometimes the number was burnt into his eyelids. He saw it in stacks of gold whenever he closed his eyes. Gold on dusty black, the vastness of his vault that would never be filled. Twenty-six Galleons was a rainy day fund, his mother had always called it that. He'd live the entirety of his adult life on that.

He would. He had no intention of giving up. He'd planned. He was ready. He could do it.

Was determined to do it well. That was no surety, and he couldn't afford mistakes. He'd read every free moment, Wizarding and Muggle law both, and he knew every requirement he'd face, every rule. Which benches in which parks could be slept on. What he could carry with him. How long he could sit in pubs without purchasing anything. And, for when he'd inevitably need it, what records he'd need to qualify for Ministry dole. Hospitals. Libraries. Diagon Alley, Regular Alley, Knockturn Alley, Hogsmeade-- places he'd gone without a thought as a child would be inaccessible to him if he hovered too long at the edges of Wizarding society, and the life of an exile was too difficult for a man with no Muggle connections. He would be careful because he had to be. There were no surprises awaiting him.

He rubbed damp palms on his trousers. It was barely half-nine. The silence was overwhelming. He rose to use the loo a final time, washed his hands thoroughly beneath warm tap water, treasuring it. He touched the cool porcelain basin of the sink, the edge of the small mirror. The curtain over the shower cubby, still damp from his final bath. No. He would not be foolish. Nostaglia for what he couldn't have would drown him, he knew it. Better a clean cut. And with the sudden agitation that thought engendered in him, he donned his coat and his walking boots, dimmed his lights with a flick of his wand, and shrank his bag to hang no larger than a small sack over his shoulder. He locked the door behind him and when he deposited the key at the front desk a moment later, he did it firmly and without looking back.

'Checking out,' he said evenly. 'Remus Lupin. My tab's paid up.'

'I can ring the Knight Bus for you, love,' said the matron, though her disinterest in his answer was plain from the way she kept her nose in her magazine. She took his key without so much as glancing up.

'No thanks,' he replied. 'I'll be walking.'

'Rain today,' she said, and turned a page.

It was grey indeed, and chill. He buttoned his coat and wrapped his scarf tight, though it wasn't quite cold enough to warrant it; he didn't want to catch a sick. Barwick-in-Elmet's Wizarding public house was one of only three renters in the village, and Remus kept to the ditch beside the lone road leading out of town. A few Muggle cars passed him, courteously swinging wide of the kerb when they tootled by, but it was otherwise solitary travelling. The maypole at High Street and Cross was lonely, sporting a tatty ribbon that blew dispiritedly in the wind. Curtains were drawn on nearly every window he passed, even at the little stone chapel where the Methodist preacher had occasionally paid him to pull weeds. That was a connection to keep, when a few pounds might mean a hot supper in a chippy some dire night. Remus lifted a hand as he trudged by, in case the old man were in there to see, but the lace at the office window never twitched.

When he was perhaps two miles beyond the town and his walking looked to be a stretch of empty road between Barwick and Leeds, he detoured toward the stand of brown leafless trees across the fields. His first Apparation would take him north to York, and from York he planned another jump to Abernethy Forest in Scotland. He'd been out to scout the area in the past week, reasonably content that he wouldn't be exposed to Muggle tourists or nature conservationists. Abernethy was mostly ancient pine, and it was a large enough space to lose one man without fuss. Nethy Bridge was near if he had any emergencies, a village even smaller than Barwick and unlikely to bother with him even if he should be spotted. He emerged into that promised rain when he did Apparate in at the edge of the forest, only a few feet from the marker he'd left himself the other day, and he shivered when the wind blew a harsh gust into his face. Best he hadn't lingered in Barwick, then. He'd be settled before the worst of the storm came through.

His tent was a patchy third-hand purchase, but he'd done all the repairs himself and was reasonably sure of it would hold against the weather. It went up with a few swishes of his wand beneath a large tree with no low-hanging or loose branches that might lead to unwelcome surprises in the night, and he set wards carefully considered to keep out animals and encourage people not to notice his little homestead, but not wards strong enough to attract the notice of any wizards who might take it into their minds to investigate a strange magical signature. Once inside, he had a cot, a little table, his small collection of books, his radio, a smokeless stove, a lamp, and a warm blanket. Home, he mouthed, and breathed out a shaky breath. Fine. Yes. His. The entirety of his life, packed inside a stuffy little space, but his. He unpacked a tin of beans from his bag and warmed a conservative portion over the stove, eating slowly to make the most of it.

He checked his wristwatch. Eleven-forty-seven.

He removed the watch and stuffed it to the bottom of his pack.

He was struggling to tie knots the way they looked in his manual when the owl found him. Remus abandoned his rabbit traps and let the poor soggy creature rest on his cot. The letter it bore had a stamp of old-fashioned red wax binding the folds, vaguely familiar writing addressing the note to 'Remus J Lupin: Cairngorms National Park, Black Grouse Nesting Grounds, Red Flap Tent'. Mystified-- the wizards powerful enough to locate him had no reason to, surely-- he cracked the wax seal and shook the damp letter open.

_My dear Mr Lupin,_

_Cordial greetings and well wishes._

_Requesting your attendance at a small social do tomorrow evening at Summerlea House, Dunblane, Stirling. Dinner and a light aperitif shall be provided. Guests are requested to arrive at six o'clock, though late arrivals shall still have their share of the pudding. The password is 'Custard Pips'._

_Please do mind Winfred. He's a cranky old soul. And, Mr Lupin, happy birthday._

It was signed Albus Dumbledore.

How odd. He'd had little enough contact with the Hogwarts Headmaster in school, and none at all since the night Dumbledore had warned him that Severus Snape had agreed not to disclose Sirius' nearly deadly prank in the tunnel beneath the Shrieking Shack out of consideration that it might trigger an investigation by the Ministry, which would surely have resulted in Remus' expulsion, if not imprisonment. However, Dumbledore had said, turning a sober look at Remus over the glinting rims of his spectacles.

However. Remus had never so dreaded a word as that one. However. Sometimes he thought everything in his life hinged on howevers.

There was a slip of soft parchment included with the note, which had fallen to his lap. When he touched it, it flared and burnt out in a wink, and then cradled on his knee sat a little box. Remus tilted back the hinged lid. Tea leaves. The scent of assam and ceylon and oak and malt was-- heavenly. Finer than anything he would ever have purchased for himself. Welcome indeed since he'd been unwilling to waste the money on having any tea at all; tea was a luxury, not a staple. A fine birthday gift for a man who could have no idea of his circumstances-- well, he hoped not. The letter had been addressed with a specificity that suggested otherwise.

He didn't cry. It was on him, swift and knifing deeply, but he only sucked in his air and bit his lip til the watering in his eyes passed. He was no child. He'd made choices, he'd planned, he'd worked for this. It was only the kind of gift you gave someone you didn't know well, good tea. It didn't mean anything. A nice gesture, remembering his birthday, and a nice invitation.

A dinner. Well, that was good luck, then, too, since his snares looked to be disastrous. But don't count on it, he reminded himself. He'd always been sparing in his appetite, knowing his next meal might be hard to come by, and he'd spared himself affection and human company for the same reason. Practise, he'd told himself every time, and it wasn't practise anymore.

'You'd be Winfred?' he asked the owl, and it hooted at him, then snapped its beak when he ventured a hand near. 'Be good and I won't put you back out in that weather,' he warned the beast. 'Now budge up. The ground's horrid hard.'

'Coo,' said Winfred, and began to messily preen himself with his razor-sharp beak. Remus curled his knees to his chest, and took up his knots again. His hands shook, but he made himself continue on without breaking. There was no good wasting time on thinking, nothing to think about beyond catching breakfast.


	2. It Was Funny, Too, How Lonesome A Person Could Be In A Crowded House

'Custard Pips,' Remus told the empty air with the tingly spot that meant hidden magic, and nervously tugged at his tie whilst Summerlea House faded into view with a waver and a distinctive sigh.

As a student he'd never thought to wonder what his professors did with their holidays, nor indeed where they did it. If Dumbledore were to have a life outside of school, as Real People did, then it appeared his was a pleasant two-storey cottage in the quaintly picturesque town of Dunblane. Ivy climbed the stone wall facing east, and a riotous garden carpeted the slope of the hill down to the river, which burbled pleasingly. Late autumn had touched Dunblane rather more lightly than Remus' new home on the opposite coast of Scotland, and there was still green in the grass for all the trees had gone bare. Dumbledore would look out from his sitting room to a lovely view of a stately old hotel and, if one squinted just a bit, a Muggle Cathedral, whose architecture offered pale echoes of Hogwarts' eccentric spires. Remus made it as far as the gate before his second-- third, fourth-- worries caught him up. He stood there he didn't know how long, one hand on the wooden crossbar, gnashing his lower lip between his teeth.

'It's no good stalling,' a sharp voice behind him said. 'He'll know you decided not to go in.'

Remus jumped, and then stumbled over nothing but his own two feet trying to twitch away from the gate in one whole piece. He caught himself on the stacked stone wall and sliced his palm open. He slapped the hurt to his mouth, and tasted copper.

Severus Snape stared him down. With evident disdain, though Remus already knew he looked a fool. 'Sorry,' Remus muttered around his hand. 'Em-- hello. How are you.'

'Late,' Snape said, and brushed him by. He didn't hold the gate, and it slammed back on whingy hinges a moment later.

For a small do, there were plenty of people inside.  A coat stand grew a spindly new arm to accept his jacket, and the thick mat beneath his feet shuddered and with great effort absorbed the muddy print of his boots.  And that was as far as he made it before fourth-- fifth, sixth-- worries stalled him in his tracks.  The only adult party to which he'd been invited was James and Lily's wedding, and he'd had a job then, ushering the parents everywhere.  He'd have liked a job now, a tray to carry, perhaps, or a kitchen to hide in.

But as soon as he thought it the opportunity for invisibility vanished.  'Lupin!' he was greeted, and his hands were swallowed by Arthur Weasley's, who pumped him in an enthusiastic handshake and then looked down at the streak of red on his palm and said, 'Oh, my.  You all right, Lupin?'

He was horrified.  'So-- sorry,' he stuttered, grabbing for his pocket kerchief and scrubbing Arthur's skin.  'It's just a cut, I thought I'd got it all--'

'Just a little mess, and you should see the fluids all our boys produce.'  Arthur rolled his eyes.  'If it's not coming out noses or nappies I prefer not to know!  There, that's fine.  Need that seen to?'

'No, I'll--'  He hadn't any plasters.  'The loo?'

'Round that corner.  Try the cocktails while you're headed that way.  The blue one.'  Arthur pinched two fingers at his lip.  'Dumbledore knows his sweet-tooth.  It'll knock you back, too.'

He never made it to the baths.  He was inching the back end of a crowd of people who were only vaguely familiar when something big hit his back, and arms snaked about him.  'Moony!' a familiar voice howled, and he turned for a proper embrace.  Sirius thumped him on the shoulder and grinned down at him.  'Haven't seen you in ages!  Should've known Dumbledore would have you here, too, if he's got all of us--'

Remus was already looking for the rest of the Marauders.  Sirius pointed, and Remus caught sight of Peter's blond curls bent over a buffet.  Despite himself, his mouth watered.  Now he spied it, he could smell the food.  'I'll say hello in a moment,' he muttered.  'Just need to...'

'James!'  Sirius was waving.  Lily reached them first, her stomach making a round little bump centre of her frock.  Remus was exceedingly careful of jostling her as she wrapped arms about him and pressed kisses into his cheeks.  She groaned when James squished her between them, but it was only playful, and the awkward three-way hug was brief.  'You're looking fit,' Sirius was complimenting him, tugging at Remus' only suit coat, the nicest thing he owned and generally saved for work interviews.  'Did I tell you the news--'

Peter arrived carrying two plates, one savoury, one sweet.  Both were clearly meant for himself, but James and Sirius both helped themselves as soon as he was in reach.  Peter snatched at a pasty before it could disappear.  Remus greeted him, subdued, trying to edge past his friends.  He saw pasta and chicken and a platter of skewered lamb, all going quickly as the crowd made their way through.

'Oh, hallo, Lupin.'

'Hello, Alice.'  He smiled at her flustered blush.  'Looks like half our year are here.  I saw Severus Snape as well.'

'Yes, and Irene Osbourne,' Alice mentioned, naming a Ravenclaw who'd been Prefect with him.  'Don't suppose you know what the news is?'

'I thought it was just a dinner party.'

'Oh, there's some big secret.  Too many Aurors here not to be.'

He hadn't put that clue to the faces around him.  Quite a few of the younger Aurors Corps, yes.  Both the Longbottoms, James and Sirius, that was Kingsley Shacklebolt there after all, and his sister Louisa, that was John Spinnet and George and Chuck Weasley, Arthur's older brothers, and he glimpsed six or seven more through the dinning room, Jimmy Chang and Edgar Bones.  'Can I, em, get you a drink,' Remus said then, thinking that would excuse him making a run on the food.

'Oh,' Alice said, and pink flared in her pale face from hairline to collar.  'No, I can't be drinking just now.'

'No?' he said, confused by her reaction.  She was touching her belly, and it dawned on him that she had the same unmistakable bump as Lily, round beneath her jumper.  'Congratulations,' he told her dutifully.  'How far along?'

'Only two months.'  She brightened.  'But I'm hungry as a horse all the time now.  If it's not too much trouble, Frank was supposed to be fetching, but I think he's been drawn off--'

'I'll get you a plate,' he promised, relieved, and hurried off before she could change her mind.  He was reaching for the stack of dishes when he realised his hand was still soiled.  He wrapped it with the kerchief and dithered a moment on his trajectory, but hunger won, and he had offered Alice a fetch.  Well, he'd only carry with that hand, til he had a moment to wash it properly.  He filled a plate with something from every platter, refusing to rush despite his stomachache.  The only sample he skipped was the pork-in-beans; he'd be tired of beans soon enough, if he never figured out his snares.  When he turned, he saw Frank had made it back to Alice after all, and they were headed out of the room without waiting on his return.  Well enough.  He stood himself in a corner beside the protection of a two-headed Growling Grapecluster tree and concentrated on quietly preserving the plate he'd meant for Alice for transfer to the bag in his pocket.  A murmured charm shrank the bag to pocket-size and he tucked it away gladly.  He took his first bite, and closed his eyes.  It was heavenly.  Silly fool, he chided himself, but his inner voice was always so tiresomely practical, and he ignored it easily.

'Ah, Mr Lupin!'

He swallowed hastily and fumbled his plate to take the Headmaster's hand-- switched hands when he spotted his bloodied kerchief.  Dumbledore politely overlooked it, squeezing his fingers gently.  'Sir,' he said.  'Thank you, your home is, I.  It's a lovely party.'

'And I'm terribly pleased you came,' Dumbledore replied.  'But, no formality here and now.  Albus, please.'

He pinked as readily as Alice had.  'Remus, then, sir... Albus.'

'And you are well, Remus?'  The Headmaster touched the elbow of his injured hand.  'Come with me, I have just the thing.'

He left his food behind reluctantly, but it was good he did, as they took a march about what seemed the entire property, and certainly more rooms than a cottage should have had.  The pitch of laughter and chatter had reached a dull roar, and though everyone presented Dumbledore with boisterous greetings, somehow they never quite seemed delayed in their journey.  There were steps, going down, and Dumbledore courteously held a low wooden door for him, though it meant Remus had to squeeze past, and into a dark room, for that matter.  'Watch your head,' Dumbledore instructed brightly, and closed them in.

'Sir?' Remus asked.

'Albus,' he was reminded, and Albus followed that with a serene ' _Lumos_ '.

They were in a cellar.  Or, truly, a laundry, with a deep-bellied sink and exposed pipes, unfinished boards standing out around a square of space some ten feet in either direction.  There were heavy locks, four of them, barring the door, and it was reinforced with iron.  Oh, Remus thought, and then didn't think, too busy feeling the seep of dread.

'Yes, I imagine it's not a sight you'd wish on a night of frivolity,' Albus agreed, as if he'd spoken, though he was sure he hadn't.  'But I wanted you to know it was available, if it was needed.'

He couldn't have spoken.  His throat was horribly tight.  Yes, it was perfect.  No different from the old wartime bomb shelter he'd used as a child.  Bare of anything he could damage.  Bare of anything he could damage himself with.  No window, not even an electric cable.

Dumbledore tapped the sink with his knobby wand, and it ran clear water that steamed gently.  'A bit of soap and a healing charm on your hand,' he advised.  'Is the bleeding usually a problem, this close to the moon?'

'It's not transmissible.  Not without a bite.'

'I know,' the old man replied softly.  Dumbledore rolled up the billowy sleeves of his robin's egg house robe to reveal gnarly forearms crossed with ropey veins.  He performed the same task for Remus, when Remus made no move to do it himself.  That he was considerate was kind; that he was kind was cruel, for it was clearly leading to something, this kindness, and Remus found himself staring stiffly at the blank stone all around him as Dumbledore washed him.  The cut stung, as Dumbledore rubbed at the grit in the little wound.  The wooden tip of the old man's wand drew a line along his flesh, and he shuddered.  A moment later, the hurt had vanished, and left not even a scar behind.

'And that's done, then,' Dumbledore said.  He went so far as to wash out Remus' kerchief, draping it over the faucet to hang dry.

'I should go,' Remus said, managing a tight whisper.

'I beg you will stay.  I interrupted your dinner.'  Dumbledore smiled benignly at the edges of his vision.  'I do enjoy parties, but it's so difficult to truly converse.  Linger, won't you?  A few of your fellows will as well.  We'll sit and enjoy a little too much liquor and while away the night.'

It would be worse than rude to refuse.  Dumbledore's hand lay on his shoulder, a paternal little touch that sucked the willpower straight out of him.  Silly fool indeed.  He'd barely been here ten minutes and he was chased off by what, precisely?  An unsolicited offer of help from an old man who'd given him too much help already.  Hogwarts had been the best years of his life, and he owed them to this man.

However, he thought.

He nodded.  'I'll stay, of course, if you still want me to.'

'Excellent.  Did you try the pumpkin tarts?  Family recipe.'

 

**

 

 

Once determined not to protest it, he actually enjoyed the party.  He'd kept himself so busy in recent years that he'd lost touch with many people he'd called friend in school, and even brief reconnections brought small delights.  Everyone had tales, and with so many Aurors in the room many of the tales were of dashing heroics.  He was jealous and amazed by turns.  He had a stop-and-start debate with Arthur and Chuck Weasley about the merits of Muggle football, with Chuck loudly explaining the rules over his brother's unrelenting confusion-- 'But there's a Quaffle in feetball?'-- and he ate altogether too much from the buffet, which seemed to be charmed to renew with new foodstuffs whenever he wandered past.  There was a trip to the back garden to watch Muggle fireworks over the river, celebrating the horrific death of some poor Muggle called Guy Fawkes, explained Benjy Fenwick, who'd always scored well in Muggle Studies, though Remus failed to grasp how a bonfire had anything to do with Papists.  Things began to break up after the fireworks, though emptier rooms meant more available furniture, and Remus found himself ensconced on a low settee with Lily, Sirius sitting at his feet and toying absently with his bootlace, and everything had a kind of golden glow of wonderfulness, which, he realised starkly, meant something bad was likely right around the corner.

The same instinct that had always warned him when James was up to no good stood him in stead now.  Just after midnight, Dumbledore gathered them all with a clap of his hands.

'My young friends,' he said.  His smile encompassed everyone, but Remus only saw the sharp eyes that had watched him in that cellar below.  Those eyes missed nothing.  'Welcome,' Dumbledore said.  'Welcome to the Order of the Phoenix.'

Sirius gripped Remus' ankle tightly.  'Told you,' he said smugly.

'The what order?' Frank asked tentatively.

'You can't be serious,' Snape said flatly.

'I'm Sirius,' Sirius joked, but it was absent-minded, and his eyes were fixed on Dumbledore, not his old school rival.  Someone's nervous titter faded into an abrupt cough.

'Yes, you might well ask.'  Dumbledore twirled the tip of his beard about a finger.  'And I will explain.  But first, I think, a question.  Is there any of you here who wish to leave before words are spoken which cannot be forgotten?'

Not a one spoke up.  Breathless anticipation had fallen like a cloak over the sitting room.  The boozy fun of the party had leeched away and in its empty place, Remus had a cold wind, like the touch of a ghost.

'You have my apologies for the deception tonight,' Dumbledore said then.  He resumed his seat, propping a slippered foot on the low ottoman before him, his hand curled about his knee.  His eyes moved over them, one by one.  'The deception was necessary.  To have so many of you in one place might be suspicious.  Ah, but a few who stay after a dinner, that's not nearly so strange.  I'm afraid the same excuse won't serve every time, if only because you'd all eat me out of house and home.

'All of you,' Dumbledore said slowly, 'I have chosen for your talent, for your bravery, for your fortitude.  Each of you is doughty and bold.  Each of you is resolute and unafraid.  You are the strongest of your generation.  And we will need your strength, if the war I fear we face is truly to be won.'

James was leaning forward, bright-eyed.  Peter was pale.  Remus thought he must also be.  He knew what it would be about, what it had to be about.  Order of Merlin, the wizard who'd defeated Grindelwald.  Albus Dumbledore, hero of war, not yet too old not to see the storm coming.

'Tonight,' Dumbledore told them, still in that calm deliberate tone, 'we will say his name.  The first and only time.  You know of whom I speak.  His crimes have been at the edge of your consciousness, the pattern of his activities resolving into sense, his threat growing dark across our land.  He calls himself Lord Voldemort.'

James set his shoulders.  Into the dead silence that followed those words, he was the only one doughty and bold enough.  'Tell us what to do, Albus,' he said simply.  And with that, the dam broke, and everyone was agreeing, proposing ideas, arguing over those ideas, and it went from frightened to heated on the turn of a pin.  Sirius got to his feet and went to stand with Fabian Prewett, hands waving as they talked.  Remus rubbed his mouth.  Lily caught his eyes, and he looked away.

'Albus,' he heard her asking, and the helter-skelter of it all died down, a bit, dropping off one voice at a time.  Lily said, 'I'd like to understand your plan.  You said each of us were chosen specially.  Why?  The Aurors I understand, of course.  But some of us...'

'Some of you are the cleverest witches of your age,' Dumbledore replied gravely.  'Some of you are trained to duel and fight and investigate.  Some of you have Ministry careers, and will be placed to gather intelligence.'

'But we'll be at cross-purposes if we're all scrambling around looking for-- for--' James began.  He huffed.  'We won't speak his name.  But we'll have to call him something.'

'He who must not be named.'

It was Snape.  The first words Snape had spoken since that protest against Dumbledore's declaration about the Order.  There was nothing sly or knowing in his hollow voice.  Remus glanced up, not the only one to do so, but Snape's head was low, his gaze on the carpet beneath his shoes.  Every line of him was tense and miserable.  Remus wondered at it.

Sirius blew out a snort.  'You-Know-Who,' he suggested.

James grinned.  'You-Know-Who,' he agreed.  'My point is we can't all be tip-toeing about in the Ministry halls.  We'll give ourselves away if we're not coordinating.  We need a plan.'

'Is there a plan, Albus?' Lily asked.

'The skeleton of one,' their professor confessed.  He smiled at her.  It was not the Dumbledore of twinkling eyes and lemon drop peddling, the Dumbledore who teased first-years and enchanted the ceiling of Hogwarts' Great Hall to whimsical sweet snows in summertime.  This was the Dumbledore who knew more than he should, knew more than he _could_ , the Dumbledore who'd outmanoeuvred every one of his enemies.  'One I shall rely upon you all to flesh.  But yes.  Point one.'  He lifted a single finger.  'Our enemy operates in the shadows of our society.  Those he calls upon to be his allies are those with long-standing dissatisfaction about their place in our world, those who are ready for a leader who promises their greatest desires.  Point Two.'  Another finger.  'Our enemy operates in the deepest shadows of magic.  The darker the spell, the greater his desire to wield it.  Convinced of his own uniqueness, this wizard has freed himself from the bounds which would have stopped anyone else on this dark path.  He will stop at nothing.  Point Three.  This will not play out solely between two Orders fighting in a ring.  The Ministry is weaker than it has ever been.  I speak not only of politicians seeking re-election, of small men frightened by bad press.  Our institutions have grown small.  Even Hogwarts is a shade of what it once was; our cirriculum, you may have observed, has calcified, and my authority to hire instructors of quality is challenged at every turn.  You here tonight represent the last classes I can confidently believe prepared to face this threat.  If we act, when we act, we may well be branded traitors.  I cannot promise even the vindication of history's long view.  Much of what we do will be secret, and it will die with us.  So, then, Point Four.  Some of us may well die in the doing.'  He paused, long and solemn, those four fingers hovering in the air.  'We will have losses.  We cannot pretend otherwise.  So I ask again.  If there is any here who wish to leave before words are spoken which cannot be forgotten?'

Caradoc Dearborn cleared his throat.  'Professor,' he said, and coughed again.  'For myself, no, but I... there's pregnant women in this room--'

'And we can speak for ourselves,' Lily interrupted hotly.

'And we should put our feelings aside and ask whether we can morally endanger them and their children,' Caradoc overrode her.  'Damn it, Lils, you think I could live with it if I let something slip at the wrong time and you died for it?'

'Or those who already have children,' said Gideon, and he was looking at his sister Molly.  She opened her mouth to retort, but Arthur put his hand over hers and leant in to murmur.  Whatever he said, she went red, and, though she shook her head, she did not answer either man.

'Yes, we must ask ourselves this question.'  Dumbledore curled his hand into a fist, and set it on the arm of his chair.  'Not only are you in danger if you accept the tasks before you, you may well be in a position to take lives.  I know that for some of you this will be an insurmountable burdern.  Be assured: there is no blame in this.  To protect life is the highest calling, the very root our magic.  If the destruction of life is beyond your bearing, the Order of the Phoenix will not be the place for you.'

'And what about the lives that will be lost if we fail to act?' Lily countered.  'You-Know--'  She hesitated, caught by something, and her strident voice faded a moment.  'He Who Must Not Be-- Named-- he's murdered.  We all know it.  If we can act, and we choose to do nothing, aren't we culpable?'

'Each of you must ask yourself that,' Dumbledore said.  'And each of you must confront the answer in the quiet of your own soul.'  He pushed himself to his feet.  'Go home, my young friends.  Rest.  Think.  I will send word when we can meet again.'  He smiled, then, bright-eyed despite the late hour and the hefty whiskey he'd been sipping earlier.  'If one or two of you would assist me in putting away the kitchen?  Remus, there's a lad.  Severus, thank you.'

Their selection was no more accidental than anything else that had happened this night.  Snape was frostily silent, going out of his way to avoid touching Remus, which was at least familiar from their school days.  They said nothing to each other as they scraped plates and wrapped leftovers with cooling charms.  Naturally Dumbledore did not have the room to store so much, and naturally sighed over its waste, before happening upon the solution that two single young men would surely enjoy a ready meal at home.  The transparent manipulation curled Snape's lip in a faint sneer, but he took his platter anyway.  Remus could hardly refuse, though the shrunken meal he'd already stolen felt as though it burned in his pocket.  A heap of food like this would keep him for days, as long as a week, if he was careful, and that would put him past the moon, when he could think without this buzzing in his head and he could-- decide-- things, things that felt just the tiniest bit out of reach.  He rubbed at the spot where he'd cut himself earlier, but it was a phantom pain.

Sirius banged the kitchen door, coming in, and Remus started so badly he knocked a bowl to the tile.  It shattered, and he cursed, kneeling amongst the shards to sweep them up.  Sirius bent to help, but they both sat back when the shards gathered themselves in a little swirl, reconstructing.  The bowl floated back to the countertop, following the path outlined by Snape's wand.

'Too much to drink, Lupin?' he asked archly.

Remus did not defend himself, though Sirius had gone stiff at his side.  Snape knew very well it wasn't alcohol.  A Potions journeyman knew the phases of the moon nearly as well as a werewolf.

'Til next time, Black,' Snape said then, holstering his wand and stepping past them.  'Or whenever it is we meet again, Lupin.'

'Slimy git,' Sirius muttered, but though he clenched his fists and ground his teeth, he let Snape walk out the door, and Remus rolled his shoulders, letting that final insulting insinuation slough off as well.  Snape might only be speaking what he'd seen with his own eyes.  Remus wasn't sure, yet, if he'd come when the Order convened again.

Sirius was not so sharply observant, however, and ignored Remus' stiffening when he drooped his weight against Remus' back, head falling to Remus' left shoulder.  'Exhausted,' he muttered.  'What a night.'

There was really no cleaning left to be done, but he disliked idleness, and busied himself drying dishes that had been left in the rack to air.  Sirius impeded him somewhat, and displayed no inclination to move off, so Remus confined himself to what he could easily reach.  'How's work,' Remus asked, a question he'd asked so many times tonight it was rote, and possibly one he'd already asked Sirius, to judge by the little laugh it garnered.

'Fine,' Sirius said, and finally stepped away, flipping to lean on the counter beside Remus.  He tossed his thick dark hair, eyes lingering on the swirl of Remus' hands as he rubbed a spoon with a tea towel.  'Work's fine.  Lily and James are fine.  Everything's fine.'

'Thought you were looking for your own place?'

'Don't really see the point in it,' Sirius said.

'Maybe so they can turn your bedroom into a nursery.'

The edge to his tone sailed right over Sirius' head.  Or seemed to.  Sirius had practised impassivity in the face of worse comments about his unusual living situation.  He'd lived with the Potters since sixth year.  He'd switched from James' parents to James himself after graduation.  Remus was sorry for it a moment later, and hunched and twitched in something apologetic.

'What about you,' Sirius said then.  'Work.'

'Haven't got anything at the moment.'

'I thought there was the--'  Sirius waved his hand.  Remus let him struggle.  If Sirius couldn't be bothered to remember, Remus couldn't be bothered to enlighten him.  Sirius sucked in his cheeks and found somewhere else to look.

'Lils was saying there's an opening at her father's factory.  Night manager.'

'I've never worked in a Muggle factory,' Remus said cautiously.  'I'd need papers.  A diplomat.'

'Diploma,' Sirius said, half a grin starting.  'Not for that, I reckon.  It's just looking after the till, pushing some paperwork.  Locking the doors.  Like being a Prefect all over again.  Lily'd recommend you.'

'I'll ask,' he said.  He dried the final plate.  'Thanks.'

'Yeah.  Hey, we're still due over Saturday.'  Sirius tossed his head again, this time at the window over his shoulder.  'Moon's up.'

'You have Saturdays at the Ministry,' he said, surprised by that.

'Got it switched.  Told you I was trying to.'

Told him a bloody year ago.  Remus wet his lips.  'No point just you coming all the way out.'

'James got the night too.  We've been planning it, Moony!  We do occasionally plan.  Thought it'd be important for you.  You know.  Birthday surprise.  Moony.'  He said it softer then.  'You didn't think we'd forget, eh?'

He had.  Truly.  It had been two days.  No cards, no owls.  He hadn't heard from any of them in nearly four weeks.  They had lives he wasn't a part of.  His voice was scratchy as he said, 'It's not important, Sirius.'

'Is to us.'  Sirius took the very dry plate away from him.  'So we'll Apparate to your flat Friday night--'

'I haven't the room.'

'Saturday morning.'

'I'm trying something new.'  He bit off the lie.  'I don't-- live there anymore.'

'So give us the new address.'  Sirius spread his hands in a 'why me' gesture.  'Come to us, then.'

'I'm not running wild in the streets of Godric's Hollow!'

'Why the hell are we arguing?'

He braced himself on the sink.  'Don't come.  I don't want you to come.'

Sirius' face was white in the lips and darkening everywhere else.  Just when the explosion seemed ready to surface, Sirius dropped the plate to its stack with a clatter.  'Fine,' he said tightly.  'If that's what you want.'

And then Sirius was gone.  He was alone in the kitchen.  His heart pounded furiously, weak as it always was this close to the moon-- or too strong, rather, beats that clattered against his ribcage and turned his chest into an echo chamber.  He pressed his hand to the spot.

Muffled voices.  Low baritone-- that was Sirius, short controlled words more evident of unspent frustration than outright yelling.  Lily's sweet soprano, James' laugh.  Peter was the only one who came looking for him, but Remus didn't turn about, and he left without saying anything.  Remus dashed a hand at the candles floating over the kitchen island, dousing them with a pinch.  With the light gone, he couldn't tell if anyone peered in the window at him, and they'd not see him still there staring out at the night.

'Ah, Remus,' Dumbledore said, when he finally emerged.  The old man had removed his outer robe and seemed rather smaller in his trousers and shirt.  His spectacles had moved from their customary perch on his nose, and hung suspended from the little tie in his beard.  He patted his chest til he found them, and hooked them over his ears.  'Yes, Remus.  Good to check these things.  You'll be off then?  Ah, to be young.  I've been half asleep since nine.'

His tongue was too dry for the words, and he swallowed fiercely before he could manage it.  'If the offer stands, I'll come on Saturday, shall I.'

'My door will be open to you,' Dumbledore said.  'Don't forget the food.  Take a candle, won't you?  Flatter an old man, afraid of the dark.  For my sake.'

Please don't, he wanted to plead.  But he didn't.  He took the food, cold in his arms, and he took the candle, soft parafin wax smooth against his fingers, and he Apparated to his mark in the Forest, to trudge back through the gloomy trees to his tent.  It was as he'd left it, wards undisturbed.  Frosted with a thin sheet of ice.  He shed his good suit coat and put it away folded in his pack, but kept his coat and scarf and boots beneath his blanket.  His breath steamed the air, til he pulled the blanket over his head.

Order of the Phoenix.  One hell of a 'however', he thought, and closed his eyes.  The faint outlines of his tent burnt against his eyelids, but only for a moment.  Only a moment.

 

**

 

He contrived to arrive as late as he could, Saturday.  He wouldn't risk darkness, but he was past the supper hour, or so he thought.  Dumbledore greeted him with a meal anyway, and they ate together at a table that shrunk, rather pointedly, to an intimacy Remus would have preferred to avoid.  Ravenous as he always was the night before a transformation, Remus ate too much, but whenever he remembered to apologise Dumbledore still seemed to have food on his plate as well, and the old man kept up a steady patter of discussion of innocuous things.  Remus even rather enjoyed their conversation, challenging Dumbledore on a point of Defence studies and even winning his argument.

'I wonder if you planned on any further schooling?' Dumbledore asked him then.  'Your enthusiasm for the subject is impressive.'

Remus mashed a pair of peas with his fork.  'I've no such plans,' he admitted, and stole a sip of his water.  'It was down to you I could attend Hogwarts at all,' he said then, brashly.  'Without a similar structure of support I'd have no chance of completing any rigourous course.'

'You're not a child anymore.  Certainly a great deal of your difficulty arose from restrictions you wouldn't face now.'

'You mean the secrecy?  I'd be glad to be done with that.  But it doesn't erase the difficulty.'  He finished his water in a gulp and sat back with the glass, rubbing his thumb over the bump of crystalline etching.  'I've no means of supporting myself.  No Shrieking Shack to hold me safely.  No home for the other twenty-six days a month.'

'Perhaps your friends could oblige you.'

'Who?'  He shrugged jaggedly.  'The Potters have already taken in Sirius.  And why shouldn't they.  Purebloods support each other.  Sirius can still do them proud.  He's an ally for their family, a chance to start a new branch of the Black dynasty.  Even if he's disinherited he'll be sought for a good marriage.  I understand them keeping him near.'

'Your blood is not your only worth.'

'My blood is tainted.'

Dumbledore set aside his silverware and clasped his hands beneath his chin.  'Those are the words of someone nearing despair,' he said gently.

'No.  Just the words of someone without illusions.'

Dumbledore said nothing.  He sat there, elbows on his dining table, fingers interlaced below a still mouth.  The light of the merry fireplace reflected off his glasses.  Somewhere in the cottage, a clock chimed.

'Remus,' Dumbledore said, dragging out his name with an odd hiccough in the middle, _Ree-mus_.  'You are aware,' he said then, at a sudden brisk clip, 'of the rise in werewolf attacks across England and Cornwall.'

'Sir.'  He inhaled and held it, wondering.  'You don't think that I--'

'No, no.  Forgive me-- I didn't mean to imply that.  I only ask if you've followed the news.'

'I'd heard.  James mentioned it once.'

'Yes, I believe the Auror Corps has formed a special task force.  It's believed a small band of renegades are responsible, not the feral clans, but there's fear on all sides.  Fear I believe our enemy has taken advantage of, in his choice of allies.'

He'd thought it during the party.  Point One, Dumbledore had said, and though his talk of allies seemed on the surface to describe the old Wizarding elite who'd long trumpeted a return to the old ways, Remus had known very well it applied to all too many types.  And he'd known why he'd been asked to join Dumbledore's Order of the Phoenix, and he knew what Dumbledore was going to ask him now.

'A man called Fenrir Greyback is named the culprit in at least seven bites within the last two years,' Dumbledore said.

Remus swallowed with difficulty.  'I know him.'

'I rather imagined you might.'  Dumbledore blotted his lips with his napkin and folded it beside his plate.  'May I pry just a little more, my boy, and request confirmation?'

'He's the one who turned me.'

'Yes.'  Dumbledore gazed at him through opaque lenses.  'There is clear political motivation behind the pattern of his bites,' he said.  'Children of highly-placed, vocal men and women in the Ministry, in the Auror Corps.  Seven bites reported.  We both know it is quite possible that many more went unreported.'

Families ashamed.  Families afraid.  Remus had been unreported.  It never mattered, really.  The burden tore at every connection whether or not it was secret.  Remus had given up resentment and blame as wasteful of his limited energy, but it didn't erase the years before that.  He still panicked in small dark spaces.  He'd never been voluntarily nude before anyone, too scarred, too mortified.  He'd worked so hard to overcome his condition that he'd even convinced himself, once, that he could ignore all consequences of it.  Severus Snape had taught him otherwise.  None of that would have been different if he'd been registered, except that he'd never have been sat in Dumbledore's cottage four nights ago amongst people he called friends, being asked to join a fight that Fenrir Greyback had brought to his door sixteen years gone.

He picked at a tear in his sleeve.  He'd got it yesterday, catching on a ragged break in the brush as he'd chopped for firewood.  'It's not that I don't want him stopped,' he said, and coughed to clear his throat.  'I-- I do.  And He Who Must Not Be Named.  But you've got Aurors.  You said they're already hunting him.  I'm no-one.  I'll never be important.  I can't even hold down work, I--  I just don't understand what it is you want me for.'

'You may well detest me for what I'm about to say.  But I think we must name it, Remus.  Let us speak plainly, and honestly.  You're intelligent and good-hearted, qualities any man would be glad to have on his side.  But you've already guessed this.  I want you, Remus, because you are a werewolf.  One of the only werewolves to ever attend Hogwarts.  One of the only werewolves to successfully live in Wizarding society.'

'I don't.  Not anymore.  Give it a year and I'll be just like all the others.  A hermit at best.  A feral.'

'No,' Dumbledore said.  'No, I don't believe that.  I have your measure, Remus, and I believe I know what stands between you and that kind of life.  You want for purpose.  And I can give it to you.  No-one else in our Order can do what you can do.'

'Track down Fenrir Greyback?'

'Not track him, no.  Harness him, Remus.  If we are to win this war, we need to isolate our enemy, remove his sources of power.  The giants, the vampires, the liches-- those are creatures we may never be able to reconcile, for we cannot offer what he will.  He'll give them free rein to wreak havoc, and we could hardly promise that.  But for the werewolves, Remus, we can bring them back.  Offer them their rightful place in our world, not banishment and indifference to their suffering.  No child should be denied education, security.  The warmth of friends who accept them for who he is, not what he is.'

It wasn't that simple.  He knew it then, he'd chew it over later.  Dumbledore wasn't the Ministry, and it was the Ministry who were needed to change laws; Dumbledore was one man with ideals that ran too far ahead of reality, and inclusion was an ideal, a pretty bauble that made absolutely no difference to a man who was hungry and couldn't afford a meal.  But Dumbledore's words were passionate and they were sentiments he'd always longed to hear from the mouths of those people he did, yes, dare to call friends, and it tore at him, that little vulnerable place that had always wanted to know belonging.  Rightful place.

The clock chimed.

'We need you, Remus,' Dumbledore said.  'Think on it.  But for now, come.  Let's get you situated, I think.  I'd have you in comfort for as long as possible, and I know you prefer a moment of solitude before the change.'

Dumbledore's hand on his shoulder was warmth and affection, like the smile the old man turned down on him.  Remus pressed at the ache behind his eyes.

'I've had a heating charm set on the laundry all day,' Dumbledore added.  'I think you'll find it a bit of an improvement over the Shack.  Should have thought of it years ago.  Steak and eggs for breakfast?  You're skin and bones, my boy.  We'll plump you up a bit.'

'Stop,' Remus said.

Dumbledore paused.  'I only meant--'

'I know.'  He rose, and Dumbledore stepped back as he pushed in his chair and cleared his plate, stacking it with the Headmaster's.  Knives, forks, the serving spoon from the mash and peas, the grizzled end of the roast.  Remus pressed his hands flat to the table and hung his head, let the tightness of his spine sag.  'I agree,' he said.  'Whatever I-- whatever I can do.  Of course.'

'Thank you.'  Dumbledore didn't touch him again, but his finger touched the table just beside Remus' hand.  'Well.  Let's get you downstairs, then.'


	3. And By Habit They Shortened Their Thoughts So They Would Not Wander Out Into The Darkness Beyond Tomorrow

Remus fitted a marble to the leather pouch and drew back to his cheek, sighting between the tines of his slingshot. The badger was snuffling its way through the shrubbery, and the breeze was turning; soon it would scent a man observing him, and Remus wasn't competent enough yet with his aim to tackle a running target. He inhaled deeply and held it; he released the ammunition, and it whistled as it fired through the air. A moment later, the badger grunted, struck, and staggered across the leaves. It didn't go down, though, and it waddled fast for an injured animal, scrambling for better shelter. Remus bounded to his feet and chased it down, catching it by throwing his sack to startle it off the only open path and trap it against a stand of trees. He blocked sharp teeth with a leather-clad glove and plunged his knife through dark musty fur.

'You're getter better with that thing,' Lynch observed.

'Always had fair aim,' Remus said. 'Just never had to use it to feed myself before.'

'You'll learn,' the older man informed him, salt-and-pepper beard parting around a grim smile. 'Hunger's a good motivator. And that's not your kill, it's for all of us. So you'd best dress it and be on to the next. New man eats last, so you'll be wanting enough to go around.'

Lynch stayed with him all afternoon, though he did little and said even less. Remus collected a pair of foxes after his badger, and brought his total up to four red squirrels, though they were so small as to be nearly useless. Those, he told Lynch shyly, should be bait for traps, and Lynch nodded slowly in approval. He watched Remus set them, choosing a likely spot near evidence of barrows. Omnivores like the badgers would take an offered carcass; foxes might, as well, and they were too fast usually for Remus to catch with his slingshot. Rabbit they might net purely for the presence of snares, and more food always had a home.

Tabrett, the official camp cook, took his catch with enthusiasm, at any rate, and Remus spent the evening at his side preparing the evening meal for the camp.  Remus'd not yet been trusted with much more than hunting and chores, nor was he sure, yet, that in the week he'd been here that he'd even seen all the men who called the camp home.  Tabrett was the only one who was overtly welcoming, though even that knew limits.  No-one talked to him beyond ensuring he knew his tasks and did them to satisfaction.  Remus didn't try to initiate conversation.  He was uncomfortable and cold and he didn't trust any of the other werewolves as far as he could throw them, and all that served to make him more one of them than ingratiating chatter would have.  Winter in the wild made allies, but it didn't make friends.

He took the pots and battered camp collection of crockery to the river to wash, with night seeping through the woods and bleeding everything to black.  He squatted in mud with a grimy bar of soap and scrubbed with a rag, pausing only to roll up the sleeves of his jumper.  He'd got another bad snag, and his sleeves were beginning to fray beyond ready repair.  He'd thought to go without his coat as long as possible, to keep it in better condition, but saw now it would protect everything beneath.  Erik had clever arm braces of leather that covered him to the elbow, not unlike the gear a Quidditch player wore.  Remus had no spare supplies, but maybe he could sacrifice a shirt to make something similar.  It would help when the snow started, as well.  He'd want for extra warmth, soon enough.

His idle daydreams were interrupted with a splash.  He flinched, catching himself in a precarious slide off his rock with one boot striking the riverwater and immediately flooding over.  He scrambled up the slippery ravine to safety on solid ground, dirty iron pan clutched as a makeshift weapon.

The man who looked up at him from the swirl of the river was powerfully built, heavy muscle overlaying big bones.  Muddy blond hair going grey at the temples hung in grimy strings over a face that looked strangely unfinished, features not quite distinguished, from beady pale eyes, sloping forehead, jutting jaw.  Scabby hands with long yellowed nails dangled at his sides.  As Remus stared, he bent to scoop a palmful of water, slurping it carelessly, rinsing sweat from his neck with another.  His ragged coat dangled in the flow as he bent, and it landed with a heavy thwap when he stripped it and threw it at Remus' feet.  There was, Remus saw with dread, congealed blood matting the worsted.

'Wot's your name, then,' the man said, as if they'd been talking all along.

He swallowed.  'RJ,' he answered.

'Clean that, RJ.'

He hesitated.  'Yes, sir.'

'Sir.'  The wild man laughed; it was like a bark, and it made gooseflesh stand on Remus' skin, head to toe.  'Do you know who I am?'

'Yes.'

'Well?'

Remus dragged the coat nearer by the collar.  It was rank-- if indeed it had ever been washed before.  He'd use up the rest of his soap and it would mould as it dried, if it ever dried, in this weather.  He took a risk.  He slid his wand from his boot, and tapped it against the coat.  _'Scourgify,'_ he said, and the thing shuddered as it shed a decade of dirt and worse.

The man in the river wore no expression at all.  But when Remus made to put away his wand, the man moved with terrifying speed.  It seemed to take him only a single leap up the ravine, and then his weight slammed Remus, and he only registered the hand at his throat when the crushing shock shuddered through him.  Piercing nails raked his jaw, immense pressure compacting his windpipe.  The other hand trapped his arm out at a right angle from his body, his wand pointed away.  They wrestled for it, Remus clinging with all his might as he gagged, slowly suffocating, stars dancing over the bared canines that growled down at him from inches beyond his nose.  The thrum of his weakening pulse in his ears was like thunder.  Fenrir Greyback forced his head left, ground him into the mud, and then he lowered his head to Remus' exposed collar and sunk his teeth in.

His screech of hurt was an airless weak thing.  It was the last of his resistance as well.  He blacked out.

It must have been only a moment or two.  When he blinked, he realised all at once that he could breathe again; that he ached, that he tingled, feeling returning; that Greyback was still on him, but not trying to kill him, if ever that had been the point of it.  Greyback smeared fingers through the sticky pain on his neck and lifted red to his nose.  He sniffed it.  He tasted it, tongue flicking out, pink to red, and Remus shuddered.

'We've been here before, lovely,' Greyback whispered.  His voice was like sandpaper, raking him.  'RJ,' he said.

'Lupin,' Remus croaked.

A slow grin spread grey lips.  'Lupin.  I remember.'

'You remember everyone you ever bit?'

'Oh, but you were special, lovely.  You were personal.'  His hand in Remus' hair wrenched him by the neck.  Greyback licked his wound, and Remus struck back with renewed vigour, thinking only to get out, away, now.  Greyback let him up, and Remus scrambled back, uncoordinated limbs flailing.  He still had his wand.  He hadn't given it up, even unconscious.  He pointed it at Greyback, trembling so badly the tip of it bounced and wavered.

Greyback rose to his feet, unconcerned.  'Had some schooling, did you,' he said.  He shrugged into his coat again, tucking in a tatty scarf to zip it.  'How's old Dippet these days?'

'Dippet?'  He managed a swallow.  The big hurt was dividing out into smaller pains.  The teeth in his collar meant nothing beyond the shock of it happening-- he couldn't be infected again.  The bruising to his trachea seemed worse, but his breathing was unobstructed.  Greyback hadn't meant to kill him, and didn't make a move on him now.  He didn't lower his wand, not yet.  'Dippet's gone,' he said, and coughed.  'Dumbledore,' he rasped.

'Dumbledore?'  Greyback considered that.  'Dotty old man.  Letting werewolves in now, are they.  Progressive.'

Said like a curse.  Remus didn't answer that one.

'How'd you find us,' Greyback asked then.  Not quite a question, really.  A threat, unspoken.

'I heard about packs.'

'How.'

'I read a book.'  He sneered.  'Can you read?'  Greyback came a step toward him, shoulders bunched.  'Stop,' Remus ordered him.  'I'll stop you.  I'll enjoy it.'

'And my boys will rip you apart,' Greyback returned.  'And they'll enjoy that.'

'No good killing all your own kind.  What's the purpose of turning so many otherwise?'

Greyback's chin went low to his chest, his eyes spearing Remus coldly.  'Clever one, aren't you.  What is the purpose?  There is no purpose.'

'Then why do it at all?'

Greyback laughed again, suddenly.  'I like to do it,' he said, and turned his back on Remus.  He trudged uphill through the trees without looking back.

Remus dropped to the dirt.  He shook all over, cold and adrenaline.  He made it to the river before he vomitted, reaction setting in.  He scrubbed the wound in his neck, soap and clean river water, scrubbed at the scratches on his jaw and his wrist.  He stuttered through all the healing charms he knew, but couldn't close them.  Even without the moon a werewolf's bites resisted curing.

And then there was nothing for it but to collect all the crockery and finish the washing.

It was well dark by the time he returned to camp.  He returned the dishes to the firepit and took his place just beyond the warmth of the flames.  If the days were generally quiet, spent on the hard work of surviving another few hours, the nights were for luxury, and Remus had taken his cue from the men around him.  They mended, or played cards, or chatted, low voices that didn't carry and didn't invite him to join, so he kept to himself and he read the one book he'd brought with him.  At least, he pretended to read.  He'd been in the camp a week and only managed a few pages.  It was nerves kept him from it, and he felt more and more prey to nerves under the cover of darkness.  They'd had no reason to reject him from their number, and if he was the youngest by some years, he'd lived with lycanthropy longer than most of the others, and it gave him a certain cachet.  But at night he was less sure of them, at night he was less sure of himself.  There was nothing in his story for them to doubt, for he'd told the truth in all things but one.  He was homeless, out of work, losing his connections in the world beyond.  It happened to all werewolves some day.  That he was Wizarding made little difference-- if anything, Wizarding families were quicker to reject their cursed werewolves, long conditioned to hate what they'd had occasion to know all too well.  Muggles had no laws confining werewolves to the tatty edges of their societies.  Wizards had never been known for kindness to those who were different.

Like setting one of their own to spy on them.  In a week he'd seen no evidence that this camp did anything but scratch out a meagre living in an over-hunted, isolated bit of woods unclaimed because it lacked anything remotely resembling resources.  These were men treading water til they gave up and drowned for the sheer relief of it.

Except Greyback.

Who watched him.  All night.

 

**

 

'Schoolboy.'  Lynch nudged him with a boot, and Remus jolted awake.  It was just past dawn, the light still lavender.  Remus threw back his sleeping bag and sat up, rubbing his eyes.

'Supply run,' Lynch said.  'You're with me.'

It meant a long trudge.  They had a bit of dried beef to share between them, and one of Tabrett's smoked fish rolls, but Remus had a rumbling stomach well before the sun rose high enough overhead to be seen beyond the mountains.  Lynch paced just ahead of him, his hands buried in his pockets to protect them from the cold.  They stopped twice, once to relieve themselves, once so Remus could bag a nest of fat grouse with his slingshot.  He tied them in a string and slung them over his shoulder to rest alongside the empty packs.  Lynch was quiet or perhaps just sleepy, and Remus didn't press him.  He hadn't slept well either.  The moon was in its dark, and he was grumpy, listless.  Times past, Sirius might have surprised him with a special trick, just the two of them roaming Hogwarts while others slept, exploring some new passageway, some dusty dungeon.  Lily had tutored him in Ancient Runes, in return for his help with Arithmancy.  Peter would break out his set of gobstones and they'd curl into the old couches in the common room, teasing til Remus smiled at last.

Those times were well past.  He'd avoided his friends after the incident with Severus Snape in the Shrieking Shack, too sore yet to forgive.  Even after things had got better between them it had never been like that again.  Yet he remembered it every new moon, with longing and increasing bitterness.  Good memories spoilt for the lack of better ones to replace them.

'There,' Lynch said at last, as they crested a hill, and he nodded, though there was really only one direction in which to look.  A village, and, from the layout, one with a market.  Lorries sped along a motorway that bisected the small town, and the bustle of foot traffic was surprisingly robust.  It was, Remus realised, a Saturday.  People would be out for their shopping at the weekend, stocking up.  As, apparently, werewolves did.

'Do we buy it?' he asked.

'Some of it,' Lynch answered cryptically.  'When we get there, you talk to them.  I want to see how you handle yourself with the humans.'

'Don't call them that.'

The older man turned a narrowed eye on it, wise to the criticism.  'Why,' he said.

'Because it makes it sound like we're not human.'

'We aren't.'

'I am,' Remus said.  'I'm just also something else a few nights a month.'

Lynch snorted.  'Them down there will beg to differ.  You ever been shot with a silver bullet?'

Remus blinked at him.  'That works?'

'No,' Lynch said.  'But it hurts like fuck anyway.  If that's human, I don't care to share.'

They garnered untrusting attention.  They were strangers, yes, but more obviously they were people who lived very different lives to the well-dressed middle-class types who bustled about the market with carts, pocketbooks clutched close.  Young children were grabbed by the wrist and hauled close as they passed.  Women declined to meet their eyes.  Men did, aggressively, suspiciously.  Remus was clean enough, though he hadn't shaved since arriving in the camp and his clothes had shown their wear before he'd worn them continuously some ten days in the rough, but Lynch could not be mistaken for a harmless tramp.  He prowled, and his dark eyes swept over everyone near him with a black glare that promised violence if reason were offered.

Remus filled their basket with items from the chemist, valuables that couldn't be made-shift at camp.  Lynch laid two bottles of whiskey atop his purchases.  It was cheap stuff, Remus could judge that much by the posted price and the indifferent labelling.  They took a bag of rice and another of dried beans-- Remus looked at them with loathing-- but nothing fresh.  At that, Remus balked.

'Fruit,' he said.

Lynch faced him off where Remus halted at the grocery.  'What?'

'Fruit.  If you don't get fruit you'll get disease instead.  You never heard of scurvy?'

Lynch looked at him as if he'd gone bent.  'You're new to this,' he said, stepping in and aiming his voice low.  'Fruit's the least of your problems.'

'You think our problems aren't compounded by unnecessary illness?'

'You can take care of it.'  Lynch motioned at Remus' feet.  It took him a moment to grasp that: Lynch was indicating his wand.  He didn't think Lynch or indeed any of the others had known about that.  Greyback had spread the word, then.

'Not long-term,' Remus informed him.  'Lemons.'

'Lemons.'

'Or oranges.  It will be cheap enough.  One for every man in camp.'  He tired of the argument.  He turned about and crossed the aisle.  The fruit stand was the source of a small crowd, and he put himself in queue.  Lynch stayed where Remus had left him, glowering.  Remus ordered the oranges from the seller, who put out a hand for the money before he made a move to bag them, and made a show of counting the coins Remus provided.  The oranges he got were smallish and too soft, and Remus stopped it before it went on too long.

'You've fresher,' he pointed out.

'Everyone gets same,' the farmer grunted.

'Then everyone will be moving on to other stands for better wares.'

There was a uniformed man at the edge of the market.  The farmer put eyes on him, and Remus followed his gaze.  He said nothing.  After a moment, grudgingly, the farmer topped off his bag with larger oranges from the top pile.

'Ta,' Remus said, politely now he had what he wanted.  'Thanks for your assistance.'  He inclined his head, and the farmer shrugged him off, eyes sliding away.  Remus left with nothing further.

Lynch fell into step with him again.  'You're lugging that all the way back,' he noted.

'That I can do with magic,' Remus replied.  'Was there anything else we needed?'

'Thought you'd be telling me that, Professor.'

'I just had regular schooling,' Remus said, deciding to put that to rest.  'Regular for my kind, anyway.  Only I knew what I'd be facing.  I don't like waste and I don't like chance.  I can avoid them both with a little forethought.'

They left by the market's back doors and stepped out into a winter day going gloomy and overcast.  Lynch pointed him not the way they'd come, but further into town, and they walked.  Lynch seemed thoughtful now, eying him sideways.  They passed a small carpark, a bakery, an off-license.  A string of council housing, where youths stood in awkward groups smoking cigarettes and playing loud music on big stereos.  The wind was kicking up.

'Greyback turned you,' Lynch said suddenly.

'Yes.'

'Why'd you come to us?'

Lynch had asked him that when he'd first appeared, and then all Remus had given was his name and the obvious nature of his condition.  No-one but a werewolf would seek out other werewolves.  Only a werewolf would find other werewolves.

But that wouldn't suffice now, and Remus rubbed at his throat.  He'd wound a scarf over the bruises Greyback had left on him, but he felt them still.

'RJ.'

'My dad hated werewolves,' Remus said.  'Hates.  Thought maybe he'd-- he tried.  Maybe when I was younger it was easier on him, to still see me and not the curse.  I tried to be a good person, it-- it doesn't much matter, does it?  I've no-where else.  Who turned you?'

At that Lynch only shrugged.  'Accident, I reckon.  I was a-- what you call it?  A Muggle.  Didn't know what I was til some bloke in a robe told me all and made me sign a Registration Form.'  He brushed dark hair from his eyes.  'Nine years ago.  I was a plumber.  Wife.  Daughter.  Solid life.  Shopped in places like that.  Sunday church.  There's no fucking God.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Are you?'

Remus breathed.  'No,' he said then.  'Not really.  Wouldn't do you any good, would it.  I'm sorry for that.  Things should be different.'

'Too much philosopher for me, Schoolboy.'  An alley, and on the other side of it a squat brick building with a neon sign buzzing in the window, advertising beer.  Lynch went in without waiting on him, and Remus followed cautiously.  A pub, and not a good one.  The floor was gummy with ages of spilled fluids of dubious origin, and the air smelt of stale ciggies and, beneath that, old sick.  A fat man at one of the rickety tables stared blankly at a Muggle telly-vision, black and white shot with static.  The place was otherwise empty.

'Stay,' Lynch told him shortly.  'Watch the door.'

'What do I do if someone comes in?'

'Watch them,' Lynch grunted, and left him for the door marked Staff Only.

It was the first thing he'd seen in an entire week that even brushed the edges of shady.  Remus turned a full circle, judged the distance between doors and bar, and employed a bit of the spatial judgment that had stood him in good stead creating the Marauder's Map.  He took up stance between the juke box with the 'broken' sign crookedly taped to the glass and the bus station where a bin of plates that reeked of rotting food sat.  From that angle, he could see through the window of the Staff door into the kitchen, and still monitor the front door.

Lynch was stood just inside the kitchen.  Small shifts of his stance turned his shoulders this way and that, as if he were talking to two people in different places.  Remus slid to the right, and caught the outline of a man.  Dark hair-- no, that was a hood.  A man wearing a hood indoors.  Something in a sack was changing hands; Lynch accepted it and put it in a pocket.  There was yet more talking.  The hooded man made a gesture, contextless for Remus but one which Lynch greeted by stiffening rigidly.  A moment later Lynch burst out of the door with a clatter.  He found Remus across the bar from where he'd been left, and Remus looked up casually from the newspaper he'd grabbed as a prop.  He made himself breathe, knowing Lynch was looking for a reason to catch him out-- he'd seen that expression on Argus Filch a thousand times, and met it blandly.

'We're going,' Lynch snapped.

'Right.'  Remus folded the paper and left it in the pile by the juke box.  'Back to camp?'

'Aye,' Lynch said.  'And none of your chatter.  I'm not in the mood, RJ.'

It took them more than two hours to walk back.  It rained on them nearly all of that.  Remus tugged up his own hood, drawing the furred rim down nearly to the tip of his nose.  Lynch went bare-headed, his dark hair streaming bedraggled over his shoulders, and his mouth was a long grim line.

 

**

 

The owl came the morning of his third week at the camp.

All had been quiet for so long Remus had almost given up waiting on it.  It was Dumbledore's owl, Winfred, and the grouchy thing was bright enough to await him beyond the treeline.  When Remus stumbled bleary-eyed in the pre-dawn fog to the river, Winfred hooted for his attention.  Still half-asleep, Remus almost shot the bird with his slingshot.  Remorseful, he gave up a sliver of cured venison he'd been saving in a pocket.  Winfred bit his finger in revenge, and then was gone, swooping off with a flap of his wide wings.

'That's a wizard's owl.'

He hadn't heard anyone following him.  But he knew that voice now.  It had haunted him many years, and it still made his skin crawl to hear it so near.  'Yes,' he said.

Greyback faded in from the fog-- or the fog faded away from him as if repulsed by the strange air around him.  There was menace there, but Remus stood his ground.  It might have only been his imagination, but it seemed the wound on his collar throbbed when Greyback was near.  The original it matched on his hip was a faint echo, thrumming in time with his heartbeat.

'Give it to me,' Greyback said.

Remus surrendered the letter, knowing to fight it would only result in injury, not victory.  Greyback turned it over, shook it.  'Thought you had no-one,' he said finally.

'I didn't say no-one,' Remus said.  'School mates.  I didn't tell them.'  He sucked in a shaking breath.  'I didn't tell them I lost my flat.  They don't know where I've gone.  By now they may have figured it out.'

'Why not tell them?'

'I don't want anyone's pity.  And I don't want to watch them fumble about trying to care for me.  I do for myself.'

'If that were true you'd not be here,' Greyback pointed out.

Remus raised his chin.  'I pull my weight.  I do most the hunting now.  You ate my deer last night.'

Greyback came in a step.  It put them chest to chest.  They were of a height-- Remus was even an inch or so taller-- but he made a bare half of Greyback's weight, and he was like a live nerve, strung tight and ready for pain.  Greyback put his hand on Remus' throat.  He'd done that twice before, now, never hurting him, not like the first time, but it meant something, and Remus stood still as stone for it til Greyback put the slightest pressure on him.  He let his head be turned, his chin tiltled even farther back.

'Like that,' Greyback said.  'Show me.  I want to see that.'

'Wolves do this?'

'We're not dogs,' Greyback said.  He spat casually, and released Remus.  'You want tales of the old packs, talk to Finn.  He's stuffed with useless stories of days gone by.'

Remus licked dry lips.  'My letter,' he said.

Greyback opened it, ripping the fold with a dirty nail.  Though Remus had needled him about literacy, it seemed it might have a kernel of truth.  The older man's lips moved as he read, sounding out syllables.  Greyback looked up a moment later, a nasty grin baring his canines.

'Thought your pa left you behind,' he said.

Remus blanked on that.  Why on earth would Dumbledore write under his father's name?  It wasn't what they'd agreed.  'I left him,' he said at last, and shrugged jaggedly.  'I'd nothing to say to him.  You're as much my father as he ever was.'

As misdirection, it worked wonders.  Greyback had no immediate rejoinder, and his pupils dilated, nostrils flared as if he'd scented something on the wind, but it was only the two of them, the fog closing them off from the rest of the world as if it had never existed.  Even the sound of the river some ten feet away was faint, a ripple gone almost as soon as it could be heard.

Remus plucked the letter from Greyback's unresisting hand.  He tore it in two and dropped the pieces to ground, and kicked dirt over them.  'I want for a wash,' he said.  'I'll start the tea when I get back.'

'Leave that for now.'  Greyback latched a hand on his arm, and Remus stopped walking.  'Moon's in two days.  Back to camp, now.  The lads'll explain.'

It was everything he had to turn his back on Dumbledore's letter, but he couldn't pay it any mind, not with Greyback watching.  He left it in the dirt, and followed Greyback in.  Dumbledore wouldn't know he'd not had a chance to read it.  Winfred would return signalling it had been delivered, after all.  He might sneak back to it later, he thought, and tried to mark the spot in his mind.  By the pine with the great knot, near where he'd got his first quail.  Why use his father's name?  The moon, he thought, craning his head up to spy it there through the trees.  Yes.  Nearly full.  Maybe Dumbledore had been writing to try and arrange a trip back to Summerlea House.  Remus hadn't yet reported anything, and the Headmaster was surely curious, if not worried about his plans for the transformation.

The entire camp was on twitchy ends, so close to the moon and too close to each other.  Remus had been keeping even more to himself.  Pol and Quinten had gone full brawling the night before, and Quinten still bore a bloody tissue in his nose as he sullenly joined the circle about the fire.  Jules and Lloyd had been on days of a lengthy argument Remus was half convinced both had forgot the origin of, and both were glowering.  Calvin, the oldest in camp, had just been sickly, and he muttered about swollen joints and headaches and barely stirred except when Greyback kicked him along to stop his constant whinging.  Lynch had told him, privately, that Calvin was going soft in the head, and to that Remus privately agreed.  A demented old man suffering the winter and sleeping on cold hard ground was a cruelty, but they none of them had choices.

'RJ,' Lynch called him now.  'Hot the kettle.'

He obeyed, filling it from their last jug of clean water.  The dented kettle swung on the tripod, next to last night's stew.  He stole a sip from the ladle as he crouched there, and tugged his furred hood up against the cold.  His ears were frozen.  There was sweat on his upper lip, his temples.  His hands shook just slightly as he wiped it away.

'Cups,' Tabrett told him, and he rose to distribute, tin and ceramic and the one horn cup, which he offered to Greyback without meeting his eyes.  The kettle whistled as he finished, and Tabrett gestured for him to serve.  'Not tea?' Remus asked, and Tabrett shook his head.  So Remus went back through the circle a second time, pouring steaming water into each cup.  Tabrett did one for him, and Remus took his seat with the chipped tea mug cradled between his knees.  No-one else was drinking, so he waited on it, too.

Lynch rose.  There was a pouch in his hand, and Remus went keen, recognising it.  It was the little sack he'd seen Lynch receive from the hooded man at the pub in town.  Lynch pried open the ties with his teeth, and dug a fist into its depths.  What emerged was almost innocuous, yet everyone else had gone tense and agitated.  Herbs, Remus thought, little curls of a faded blue flower--

'Wolfsbane,' he said.

Lynch looked at him.  Greyback did, as well.  It was Erik, the tubby middle-aged man who, like Remus, mostly busied himself with books who answered.

'Do you know what it's for, RJ?'

'It's poison,' he said flatly.

'To humans,' Lynch corrected.  'To werewolves, it's--'

'Still poison,' Remus interrupted him.  'You can't just plonk it in some water and drink it.  That's an ugly way to die.'

'Quiet,' Lynch commanded him, and Remus bit his lips together.  'This is no ordinary stuff.  It's enchanted.'

If that were true, it made Remus even more reluctant to go anywhere near it.  But Lynch was dropping a pinch in each cup as he walked the circle, no more precisely measured that whatever came up between his fingers, and all the others looked resigned, if not happy about it.  When Lynch got to Remus, he put out the pinch of wolfsbane expectantly, his arm remaining out-thrust when Remus stubbornly covered his cup.

'Do it,' Greyback said quietly, 'or leave.'

That threat shook him.  It was too sudden a jump, from indifference to acceptance to the sudden limit, reached so abruptly.  His throat was dry.  Reluctantly he moved his hand from atop the cup, and Lynch dropped in the herbs.  They floated, spreading blue taint over the hot water, and then sank to the bottom of his mug.

Lynch ended the circuit with his own cup, and he raised it above the fire.  'Ally-oop,' he said.  'Bottoms up, lads.'

The stuff was fizzling.  This was no potions-making Remus had ever seen.  That it was enchanted did seem likely, with a chemical reaction like that, and the deathly vapour pouring each dose in quantity greater than a bit of boiling water quickly cooling should have produced.  But it was still poison.  Watching the men he'd come to know swilling it back with nothing but a grimace was insanity.

'Stop stalling, RJ,' Erik urged him gently.  'We do this every month.  If it killed us, we'd not be sat here doing it again, would we?'

Greyback had drained his cup.  He dropped it to the dirt and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.  He stared Remus down from across the fire.

Remus put to his lips.  He choked on it, and coughed wetly into his elbow.  The stuff was vile, and it numbed his tongue at just a single swallow.  It was a struggle to get the rest of it down.  He coughed again when the remains of the flower lodged in his throat.  Bernard pounded him on the back, but the fit wouldn't leave him, and he gasped for air til Lynch knocked him off his stool and forced his head down between his knees.  Remus shoved at him, fought him off, and staggered to his feet.  He left the circle at a hot stride, ignoring the call of his name.

The fog had begun to clear, but the deeper he plunged into the woods, the more the ghostly white surrounded him.  He lost his bearings once, and forced himself calm long enough to orient.  The river was at his right, with the rising sun.  He went toward it, ignoring the spots where he'd laid snares the night before, ignoring the flutter of some kind of game that heard him coming and made off in the opposite direction.  At the moment Remus didn't give a damn if every last one of the camp starved.  His stomach churned.  He couldn't remember the text of his Potions book-- aconitum-- fatal dosage by tincture-- burning, tingling, numbness in the face, the hands-- he had that, didn't know if it was his fury over being forced into death by idiocy, illiterate knobs drinking what some fool stranger gave them, never drink a potion you didn't see made, Professor Slughorn always said-- symptoms within the hour--

He fell to the dirt and grabbed up the pieces of Dumbledore's letter.  He'd torn it right down the middle and obliterated a word or two, but it said little enough as it was.

_Son,_

_Should it be needed, my home is open to you.  I hope you will assuage an old man's fears and send word if you will come._

_Always,_

_X_

Not especially deceitful, that mark in place of a signature.  Always.  That was the deception, right there.  At the moment, however, Remus would have spent a thousand nights in a dark cold laundry over paralysis and slow suffocation.  He ripped the letter again and again with trembling hands and flung it away from him.

He didn't die, of course.  He wanted to, that night, when they made him drink it again.  By morning he was in agony, a burning gut, too dizzy to stand.  Unable to breathe, no matter how he sucked at the air gone soupy and thick in his throat.  His head was fit to bursting, pounding relentlessly.  Lynch forced the wolfsbane down his throat again at breakfast, which he couldn't eat; he could do nothing but lay in his pallet groaning and cursing.  Delerium put him out of that misery and plunged him into another of strange frightening chases, monsters that leered at him from the window and crawled into his bed to tear down his pyjama bottoms and touch him, touch him, bite him.  He cried like the child he'd been, and thought someone stroked his hair, but next the hand was clenched on him, holding him still as they poured the disgusting brew down his gullet, and then the moon was high in the night sky and he was no longer-- Remus-- but--

He lifted his head and sniffed the wind.  There were others with him; that was new.  It had never been that way before.  They sniffed and nipped and yowled and then the biggest one, a fine big beast with luxuriant grey fur and snapping jaws that taught swift lessons goaded them all into a run.  Oh, it was freedom to run, and Remus howled his delight.  They plunged over the river, rolled in the mud, ran down a family of deer and fought to be the first to bring them down-- Remus gouged the hamstring of the antlered male, but when he lunged for the throat the big greyback threw him aside with a heavy shoulder.  The greyback took the kill, slashing out the deer's throat, and he took the first eat, sharp fangs rending the tough hide and tearing at the good muscle-meat of the chest.  Remus crept low on his paws, disdaining the others who milled about whining with anxiety.  The greyback took his eat and Remus gave him a considerate space, but he was so hungry, and the blood-smell so good.  At last he took his chance, darting forward.  He ripped at the deer's back leg and exposed blood and meat, and a hot sweet mouthful was not enough, so he went back for more.  The greyback raised a shaggy head to him, moonlight reflecting off his eyes.  Remus bared his throat.  After a moment, the greyback snuffled permission, and Remus took his fill.  He backed away only when the greyback did, and then the others fell upon the carcass.  Remus nudged against the greyback's heaving side, aiming a lick at his bloody muzzle.  The greyback allowed that, too, though it stung him with a bite when he incautiously trod too close.  Remus bounded away, and the greyback gave him chase.  Remus brayed his thrill to the moon overhead.  The greyback didn't like that, and when he attacked, Remus was too surprised to protect himself.  The sharp fangs rent his hide this time, scoring a deep wound in his flank, and he stumbled getting away.  They rolled and the greyback bit him again, clamping strong jaws on his nape and trying to shake him.  He felt flesh tear as he got away, and rather than risk a counterattack he threw himself into a run.  The greyback gave him chase, but Remus was sleek and fast and the greyback too big and heavy to sustain that pace, and fell back more and more.  He barked at Remus, but it was easy enough to pretend he hadn't heard, and soon he couldn't, too far ahead to make it out over the noise of the others.  He chased the moon, which never got closer, but that didn't matter, not truly, not when it was so very good to run.  He could run the entire night, and he did.

He woke in an unfamiliar place.  It was dark.  Or, truly, dark where he lay, in a little cave of roots and mud hollowed out for some other creature, though the den had long been abandoned.  He was a man again, too big to get out of a space that had likely been tight for a wolf.  But-- he remembered.

He remembered.

It took him hours to claw at the dirt enough to widen the entranceway.  He was weak and disorientation swept him every other inhale.  He discovered his wounds when he crawled out of the barrow, scraping them open and leaving a streak of his human-again blood on the dirt.  His wand.  He needed his wand to Apparate.  Couldn't Apparate without knowing where he was, he didn't know, couldn't know-- could be halfway across bloody Britain if what he remembered was real--

There was a gentle pop of air, and a man approached him.  Remus stared with watering eyes, shrinking back.  A hand touched his cheek.  Grabbed him by the elbow and hauled him up on wobbly legs.  There was a wicked crack, and everything jumped sideways, a crazy whirl of sound and fury that dumped him sprawling on hard pavement a moment later, and Remus retched into a rosebush.

'Get inside,' the man told him, and hauled him along.  His bare feet scraped on slate stones and gravel, and then wooden steps, and then there was soft carpet and the bright light vanished into cool calm.  He was forced up stairs, tripping and going to his knees and still yanked along unrelentingly, and a door was flung wide and he was dumped over the side of a big cold hole, and water spewed out of nowhere and drenched him.  He spluttered and coughed and curled away from it, wrapping his arms about his head to protect himself.  The hole was filling up, and the water was warming up, and when the man pushed and pulled and finally propped him upright against a soft fuzzy towel, he knew where he was.  A bath.  A bath in a house, and he knew by the smell which house it was.

'Custard Pips,' he mumbled, and heard a breath of agreement above him.

He slept.

 

 

When he woke again, it was evening.  The chime of a clock somewhere beyond the bath rang five.

The bath was still warm, and glowed faintly, indicating he'd been spelled, or at least his water.  His limbs more or less obeyed him as he pulled the drain plug and rose; he made it out onto the mat without endangering his life on slippery tiles, and wrapped himself in the fluffy towel that waited on the hot towel rack for him.  It was large as a blanket, and perfectly toasted.  He dried his hair indifferently and donned the slippers that awaited him atop the toilet.  There was a tube of toothpaste and a new brush alongside a bit of folded paper that read, simply, _Compliments_.  He spread paste on the bristles and stuck it between his jaws.  His teeth ached a bit from the recent re-shaping of his jaw, but mint overpowered the lingering taste of raw blood, for which he was profoundly grateful.

He glanced up at the mirror, and stopped, arrested by the sight that greeted him.  'Shit,' he said.

'I wouldn't put it quite so bluntly,' replied a prim voice from the portrait of pointilist sunbathers hung over the commode.  The father in his long suit covered his little daughter's eyes, while the mother clucked at him.

Remus touched the wound at his throat.  Greyback's bite.  That had faded in the weeks since Greyback had inflicted it, but it was well-healed now, just a patch of shiny skin that only resolved into the marks of human teeth if you knew what to look for.  Last night's bite at his nape had been inflicted by a wolf, however, and it was raw and seeping pale pink.  Remus dropped the blanket to examine the wound on his side.  It was cleaned and cool to the touch, so he'd at least been spared infection, but he'd rarely had one so bad.  Even the sight of it threatened the equilibrium of his stomach.  Remus breathed carefully through his nose as he prodded the edges.  Ragged, and curling awkwardly on his human body as it probably had not on his wolfish form.  It spread wide over his lowest rib and dragged long and slim over his hip, coming to a faint red chequemark midpoint on his left buttock.

He opened the cabinet and found rubbing alcohol and cotton pads.  'Plasters, please,' he asked it, shut it, and opened it again to find what he'd requested, in several different brands.  He chose the butterfly strips, and stood grinding his teeth as he repeatedly pinched the edges of the wound together to lay the plaster.  His fingers were stained when he finished, and he was light-headed again.  He wiped himself clean and initiated the hunt for his clothes.

The house was empty.  He checked the bedrooms and the kitchen; there was food waiting, a plate charmed to heat til he lifted the cover and found a roast potato, steamed parsnips, and a chicken pot pie.  He ate the parsnips with his fingers, too famished to skip it over, but he had no desire to stand about starkers for his entire meal.  He clutched the towel close and wandered the sitting room, the dining room, the office, even checking the cupboards for sign of anyone.  He hadn't imagined the man who'd brought him in, though he now doubted it had truly been Dumbledore, for all he'd ended out in Dumbledore's home.  A glance at the calendar proved him correct: mid-week, Dumbledore would be at Hogwarts.  So it had been someone else, but not someone who'd wanted to stay for the thanks he deserved.  It had to be someone from the Order of the Phoenix, hadn't it?  But they'd at least have stayed to see he didn't drown alone in the bath.  He ventured, then, down the dark steps to the laundry.  He needed a few deep breaths to make himself open it.  There was no light, without his wand, and the windowless cell was dark and foreboding.

'Stop being childish,' he told himself, and edged a foot over the jamb.  He clutched the towel to his chest.  Child and a fool.  It was only a bit of dark.

He darted across the cold floor and slapped a hand along the sink, and found them.  He grabbed at his clothes, damp and draped over the sink to dry.  He ran out of the laundry with an armful of fabric, and didn't stop til he was back above ground with a pounding heart.

He dressed where he stood.  Whoever it had been had done a patchy job on his clothes-- the sleeves and undearms particularly smelt of soap, but the hems were barely wet and his undershirt and shorts were altogether dry and untouched.  Still, he felt like himself once he had his kit, and he went so far as to button his coat all the way to the chin, and only once he knelt to tie his boot laces did he stop to wonder how his clothes had followed him from the camp to Summerlea House at all, since he'd certainly not had them when he transformed.

Another mystery to be solved with some strident questioning.  Assuming he ever saw anyone in the house but his own reflection. His wand had appeared by the dinner plate, when he returned to the kitchen.  It lay atop a letter.  Neither had been there before, so perhaps there were wards on the house, timing everything to his movements.  He overturned the letter, and found the red stamp of wax with Dumbledore's seal on it.  It was addressed 'Remus J Lupin: At Large.'

_Dear Mr Lupin,_

_Please join me for a celebration of the birthday of one Alastor Moody, who has achieved the great age of forty and must be feted with all due decorum.  I will host at Summerlea House, with which location I believe you are already acquainted.  Alastor has threatened all gifts will be donated unopened to the Black Lake outside Hogwarts, so I leave gifts or no gifts to your individual discretion.  The party will begin at seven this Sunday night.  The password is 'Blackcurrant Pastilles'._

_Yours,_

_Albus_

He'd have a job of it, explaining where he'd gone and why he meant to leave again.  No helpful hints on how to extricate himself for a party with the friends he'd supposedly abandoned.  Remus poked at the pot pie.  Though it had been days since he'd eaten, not counting last night's brush with the deer, he found he had no appetite.  He drew his hood over his head, gripped his wand, and Apparated back to the camp.

 

**

 

There was little relief to his return to camp.  Tabrett, installed in his usual spot by the fire, lit up on seeing him, and Remus spared a small smile.

It was downhill from there.  Lynch was next, and left him in no doubt at all that he was in trouble.  Lynch took one look at him, blinked slowly, and then hit him across the face with a closed fist.

Remus spat blood.  He wiped his mouth on his sleeve.  His lip was split.  Lynch raised a hand to him again, and Remus ducked away.

'I brought tea,' he mumbled, and dropped the box at Tabrett's knee.

'Tea,' Lynch growled.  'I should turn you over my knee and fucking thrash you, RJ.'

'I won't take that shit again.'

Greyback had appeared behind Lynch.  Remus aimed that at him. If Greyback thought anything of that, it didn't show on his face.  He didn't agree.  He didn't disagree.

'I'm going to see me Dad on Sunday,' Remus added then, because what the hell.  Lynch made a noise of disbelief, but Greyback's thick brows slammed together. 'Good night,' Remus concluded, somewhat foolishly, but he'd never been all that good at sticking the ending, and now was no exception.  He hovered a moment, torn, and then decided to just leave it there.  'Right,' he said, and went to bed.


	4. He Understood It All In Every Way, Except With His Brain

It had been over a month.  His wards were fading-- sloppy work on his part.  Remus spent hours reweaving them, til even nose-to-nose with the shields he could see nary a ripple in the air where magic bent the light around his tent and made it vanish.

His things were all undisturbed, which alleviated that worry.  There were faint tracks at the edge of the clearing he'd claimed as his, animal or human he wasn't skilled enough to discern, but his magic had held.  Remus checked his food stores and found them as they'd been left; his trunk smelled a little too much of mothballs, but his clothes were as good as they'd gone in.  His cot creaked with his weight, unused to him, but with the lamplight flickering merrily he sank into the silence with gratitude.  It had been over a month, and in that month he'd been every minute under the gaze of some man suspicious of his every sneeze.  He'd forgot how precious privacy was.

That was quite a journey, for a month.  Dreading this solitary tent to missing it.  No doubt he'd swing back round to loathing, someday.  The war would end, wouldn't it.

Some day after it properly began.  His Muggle grandfather had been in a real war, with trenches and machines that spat bullets and gaseous vapours spread by bombs, not wands.  The old codger had terrified Remus, always glaring at him with the empty socket of his left eye.  'The Germans, laddie,' he'd say, booming it out bold and vicious.  'The Germans'll come for yours, if you don't shape up.'  Likely it had been a joke, Remus supposed now, but he'd had nightmares about evil monsters, faceless German soldiers who marched like automatons into his bedroom and plucked out his eyes for misbehaving.  His mother had scolded her father, and the old man had bribed him back with tarnished old tuppence coins from his collection.

Won his undying love for the sole moment of total honesty in his entire childhood.  The lone Muggle in St Mungo's, refusing to leave his grandson's side no matter the visiting hours.  'We're the monsters, laddie,' he'd sighed.  'There's nowt out there as worse than what's in here.'  He'd tapped his temple, just beside that empty eye.  Stroked Remus' hair, and taught him poker and barbu and told him entirely too bawdy tales of the French brothel where he'd picked up the trick cards, the clap, and Remus' grandmother.

That seemed like another lifetime.  Farther away than Hogwarts, but Hogwarts was a fading memory now, as unreal to him as a story in a book.  He'd been that boy, innocent and stupid.  But it didn't feel real, not any more.

He slept fitfully.  Woke disorientated.  The sun was set just after four, night descending rapidly.  It was snowing.  He went out in it, turning his face up to the soft sting of frozen flakes, opening his mouth to taste them on his tongue.  He scooped a handful for a cup, and melted it over his burner to make a good lather with his soap.  He shaved with the aid of a small mirror propped on his trunk, nicking himself a few times as he relearnt the lean lines of his own jaw.  He was well due a trim to his hair, as well, nearly long enough now to tie back.  He brushed it carefully behind his ears.  He brushed his shoes, that killed a goodly half hour, never having had such treatment before, spit for polish and a bit of dubious spellwork for the sole coming loose on the left one.  His boots were in more desperate need, but he wanted a surer sense of what he was doing before he tackled a month of caked mud and fraying laces that strained the battered leather.  He could hardly pop round to Diagon Alley for a book from Flourish and Blott's, but maybe one of the ladies would know a household charm.

He arrived at Summerlea House a few minutes before seven, and stood in the garden looking out over the river.  It was going frozen on the edges, white ice.  He'd brought his heavy wool muffler out, though he'd saved his good gloves and huddled chafed hands in his pockets instead.  His nose going numb reminded him of his purpose.  He sighed, an exhale of steam in the frigid air, and turned about to discover that he was not alone amongst the roses.

'Oh,' he said.  'Hullo.'

Inky hair fell across a pale cheek as Severus Snape looked away.  'Lupin,' he replied, such a long moment later that Remus had decided to just edge past him and go in.

Now, uncertain, he kicked at a bit of stone beneath his heel.  'How's work?' he asked, because he always asked that, old habit.  It was the safest topic, one guaranteed to keep conversation safely impersonal, one that could be easily distracted from questions Remus himself was unable to answer.  Snape did not, however, provide anything, and Remus stumbled to fill the gap.  'You're still tutoring?'

'I've been hired on at Hogwarts.'

'Defence?'

Dark eyes swung toward him.  'Potions.'

'Oh.'  Of course Snape had been studying Potions, Remus knew that.  'Only I thought you'd have liked Defence more,' he said lamely.  'Weren't we always neck-and-neck in class.'

'Horace Slughorn wished to retire,' Snape said at length, not quite an answer, but a definitive finish on that line of inquiry.

Any rate, the door opened then, Molly Weasley appearing there in a pretty house dress of paisely blue, her red curls piled precariously atop her head.  'You'll catch cold,' she scolded, gesturing them in.  'Come get warm.  Butterbeer?'

'Ta, Molly,' Remus said, and followed Snape up the path indoors.  Snape gave up his overcoat reluctantly, mostly because Molly went so far as to unbutton it without waiting on him, but he stalked off immediately thereafter.  Remus took it from Molly's arm before he could get like treatment.  'I'll hang it.  Don't mind our poor manners, I expect we're only frozen and silly.'

'Some of you, perhaps,' Molly murmured.  She pressed a kiss to his cheek.  'You look weary, love. Butterbeer for you, pick you right up.  Come say hello to Arthur once you're settled?'

'I will.'

It was, if anything, even more overstuffed than Dumbledore's last party.  Remus squeezed and excused himself for squeezing past dozens of people he didn't know, many of whom wore long robes of officious black, rather than the more casual fashions sometimes disastrously inspired by Muggle style.  Remus saw plenty of gold lamé and even a peek or two of neon, and got trod on by a platform boot beneath bell-bottomed denims, but it was a different crowd than before and he wondered at Dumbledore's facility for disguising his aims.  No-one comparing the two parties would suspect the overlap that was the Order of the Phoenix.  Nor, he doubted, would most of the Ministry officials present tonight suspect they'd been part of the cover-up.

He hung Snape's coat in the closet by the stairs, not yet stuffed to overflowing, though the cupboard gave a little twitch and only grumpily enlarged to accommodate two more additions.  Remus shoved his to the back, where no-one would notice the faded wool or the missing buttons.  Deep breath.

He dispensed with business first.  Alastor Moody had prize of place by the large hearth in the sitting room, a big leather chair that was adorned with tissue crowns and streamers.  Moody scowled into a mug of something Remus doubted very much was butterbeer.

'Happy Birthday,' Remus said, and Moody grunted at him.  They shook hands.  'I'm Remus Lupin,' Remus said.

'I know who you are, boy.'  Moody yanked on his hand, suddenly, and Remus was sat by force on the low brick shelf of the hearth.  'How's tricks, eh,' Moody said then, loud and hearty, and Remus blinked at him.

'Er, fine,' he said.  'I-- er-- you?  How's work?'

Moody's beady eyes followed something in a crawl around the room, and though Remus turned to look he couldn't tell for sure what.  Or, perhaps, who.  A moment later, Moody relaxed.

'I hate parties,' he muttered, burying his nose in his drink.  'If I wanted to talk to any of this lot I'd do it at the Ministry.'

'Oh.'  Remus rubbed his hands on his trousers.  'I'll, uh, I'll leave you to your, um.'  He took the small package from his pocket and set it on the hearth beside the many others with brighter wrapping.  'Happy Birthday,' he said again.

'How lovely!  What a kind thought from a good lad.  Give it here, let's--'  Moody's oversaturated gratitude again faded as soon as he'd avoided the notice of some work colleague who swerved to give them privacy.  Moody sagged in his chair.  'Bloody Dumbledore.'

'If you didn't want a party,' Remus tentatively began.  Moody confronted him with a brooding stare, and Remus bit his lips together.

'Well, give us that, then.'

Mutely Remus held out his gift.  It was only brown paper, tied off with string, but Moody hardly seemed the sort to notice.  He shucked it with a savage tear, at any rate, and looked up with eyebrows climbing.

'It's a hand catapault,' Remus said.  He cleared his throat.  'It's a Muggle weapon.  You can use it for--'

'I've seen them.'  Moody overturned the y-shaped frame, tugging at the rubber strips.  'It's a weapon?'

'Well, it can be.  I use it for hunting.  I carved that.'  He shrugged jaggedly.  'I made some for a few of the men, thought you'd be interested in them as well.  I can demonstrate...'

Moody looked up with eagerness that was unfaked, this time.  'Lad, I can't think of a better idea.  Outside, immediately.  Post-haste.  Lupin, you said?  Lupin, you're a genius.'

If Moody was more enthusiastic about Remus' gift because it got him out of the house, that was as good a reason as any.  They did go outside, with wands to light their way, and Remus fired several garden pebbles over the river.  They garnered an audience shortly, mostly younger men in the Auror Corps who all wanted a turn trying it out, and Remus talked at some length with them about torque and stabilisers.  It might have gone on much longer, but the wives appeared with word of cake, and a fresh batch of mulled wine, and the crowd dispersed.  Remus discovered he was shivering.  He'd never got his coat.

'Here,' someone murmured, and Remus turned to find, once again, he was being watched.  This time it was Sirius.  Sirius put gloves on Remus' hands with two firm yanks.  They must have been his own, for they were already warm.  Sirius slung an arm about him, rubbing Remus' chilled shoulders.  'Want to tell me about it?'

'Tell you about what.'

'For one, why you look as though you haven't had a decent meal in a year.'  They made slow progress up the path, and Sirius went for the left fork, that wound back toward the kitchen.  For a moment they were out of sight of any windows, and Sirius' hand slid along his arm to brush against his fingers.  But he didn't linger, and Remus set his teeth together.  'For two, where you've been.  No-one's seen hide nor hair of you.  I tried writing.  My owl brought it back undeliverable.'

'I told you I'd left the flat.'

'You didn't mention there was no forwarding address.'  Remus said nothing, and Sirius' steps slowed to a crawl.  'Moony,' he said.

It was suffocating, suddenly.  He put on a burst of speed and made it to the door.  Sirius caught him up, but he burst through the door and then there were people about.  Remus took his escape.  He didn't look back to see if Sirius followed.

The Order met after the party.  Their number had grown, somewhat, to include several of the older men and women who'd been at the celebration.  Some faces from the first Order convening had gone, though.  No-one remarked on it.

Dumbledore called them to sit, and Remus found a place on the carpet sandwiched between a man who introduced himself as Mundungus Fletcher and a sprightly elder with radiantly white hair who brightly told Remus to call him Elphias and wouldn't hear of taking a stool away from any of the dear ladies.  Remus hugged his knees to his chest.

'Welcome, friends,' Dumbledore said.  'No, I'll not keep you long tonight; I know many of you are needed at home.  But we have early reports to hear.'

Remus tensed.

'Kingsley,' Dumbledore invited, and the dark-skinned man rose to his feet across the room.

'We're working on getting ears in the Ministry of Magical Law Enforcement,' the Auror said.  'The Junior Under-Secretary is sympathetic, and I think we can get her on our side with a little persuasion.  MLE's been with budget troubles for years, and they're understaffed.  All of that's intriguing, but there's something more to go on.  Usually it'd be the Aurors who'd be in on this, but I think it's one of those things that's too diffuse to actually put together unless you're seeing all the reports.  I think there's a list.  A list of wizards who've been identified as Dark, or going toward Dark, perhaps.  If we could get our hands on that list...'

Moody also heaved to his feet.  'It's a bureaucracy, and bureaucracies created lists,' he grunted.  'I don't doubt it exists.  What I want to know is what other lists there are.  We all have guesses about who's likely to fall in with You-Know-Who, but what about the actual crimes they've committed?  We need patterns.  We need patterns to make predictions.  We can't watch every suspect wizard in Britain waiting for them to make a wrong move, but we _could_ watch places, or set tracers for certain kinds of magical events.  We need to know where they'll strike and what they'll want out of their targets.  Money?  Totems, tools?  Information?  Because you can bet they'll be getting ears in all the same places we are.'

'Indeed, we must expect it.'  Dumbledore pressed steepled fingers to his lips.  'So we begin a game of intelligence.  Let me say this, though I know some of you will disagree.  There must be no lists amongst us here.  Wait--'  At the rise of protest.  Dumbledore kept his hand high til voices petered out.  'Intelligence can be stolen.  Information is a risk.  And I would risk none of you more than we must.  Some things may be known to all of us, and indeed our strategy must be discussed and refined and well-considered, but there are things which should not be spoken openly.  For now, at least, it behooves us to funnel certain information only to those needed to carry out action.'

'You want us to keep secrets from each other.'  That was James, who sat one of the sofas with Lily on his knee.  Their hands were entwined in her lap.  But where James looked doubtful, Lily was thoughtful.  She caught Remus looking at her, and didn't smile for him.  He turned his gaze toward the fire, feeling stripped and useless.  She knew.  Lily always knew their secrets.

It hadn't been her, bringing him back from wherever he'd gone that night, mad with the wolfsbane?  No, he was sure it had been a man.  Someone strong enough to haul him about, useless as he'd been.  And Lily would have stayed.  Any of the boys would have stayed.  But none of them would have known from where to fetch his wand and his clothes.

'I do,' Dumbledore was saying, as Remus dropped his chin to his knees.  'And I know this will be a burden.'

There was more talk, then, and reports from Dorcas Meadowes from the Obliviators and from Peter who had taken a post a year ago with the Muggle-Worthy Excuse Committee and thought he might be able to turn that to some advantage in back-tracing events covered up by the Ministry, knowingly or otherwise.  The Order would have a finger in every aspect of the Ministry, at some level in every office, it was clear, and equally clear that such would hardly be enough.  They'd have information after the fact of its happening, filtered by people who may not know what they'd encountered or who had reasons of their own for shading it a certain way.  It would be, Remus saw, a game indeed-- follow the leader.  He Who Must Not Be Named.  They'd never get out in front of him.

Not that he had any ideas for fixing that.  He was tired, too tired to think.  Too tired to stay awake the entire meeting, even.  He only knew he'd dozed off when he snapped back to awareness, his cheek smooshed from pressing against his arm.  Elphias was talking passionately about something, hands waving; that was what had waked him, getting accidentally swatted when the old man made a big butterfly sweep with his arms.  Remus wet his lips and sat to attention.

'--cannot afford ignorance of the darkest annals of magic,' Elphias was saying.  'In our day, Albus, duelling was no-holds barred, and you can be sure these Dark wizards will halt at no boundary of honour or law.'

Dumbledore stroked his beard with a wizened hand.  'Duelling has been pulled from Hogwarts' curriculum,' he said.

There was a rumble of disbelief.  'What about the clubs?' Sirius asked.  'It's half the points for the Cup.'

'We've been encouraged to focus on gainful pursuits such as Quidditch.'

'Hey, Quidditch is all right,' James said, mock-offended, and there was a bit of laughter, at that.

'Indeed, I enjoy a rousing game myself,' Dumbledore agreed.  He smiled gently.  'But there is an element of practical application to the duelling clubs that is missing from Quidditch-- not to mention Quidditch employs a rather smaller number of students.  I'll think on it, Elphias.  I'll think on it.'

The clock chimed two before they disbanded, by which time Remus was not the only one smothering yawns.  A pot of strong tea made the rounds, and a few stood chatting, but most donned coats and made their way to the door.  Remus attempted to be one of them, but recalled he still had Sirius' gloves, and so he dithered, nodding good-nights to his fellows and sneaking a handful of Doncaster butterscotches into his pocket.  He wanted a final word with Dumbledore, as well; he hadn't yet figured out who might've helped him during the full moon, but Dumbledore would know, he was sure.  He waited politely as Moody collected his gifts, grumbling all the way-- though Remus did note the slingshot went into a back pocket, not the sack-- and bade the Headmaster farewell.  Remus stepped forward, then, but Dumbledore ducked into the back corridor.  Remus followed only far enough to see he had found someone else to talk to: Severus Snape.  Their conversation was too low to overhear, even if he meant to eavesdrop, but he could see well enough it was uncomfortable.  He left them to it.

Only to walk into something worse of his own.  He found Lily, James, Sirius, and Peter all waiting for him just beside the door.

'Your gloves,' he told Sirius, thrusting them out.  'Thanks for the loan.'

Sirius chewed his lower lip, an old habit Remus hadn't noticed for many years.  'Keep 'em,' he shrugged.  'I've got others.'

'So've I.'

James kicked Sirius in the shoe.  Sirius frowned.  Remus did as well.  So they meant to talk about him, not to him.

'Out with it,' he said finally.  'I'm not going to like it any better for waiting on you.'

Peter said it first.  'We're only worried.'

'You needn't be.'

'Where you living, then?' James confronted him abruptly.

'With some mates.'

'Who?'

'No-one you know.'

'Still in Britain, at least?' Sirius joined sourly.

'South a ways.  The Marches.'

'This is like pulling teeth, Moony.'

Lily appeared to reach her limit.  Her cheeks were flushed rosy.  'If you're going to do it, just do it,' she muttered at James, and went off a few steps, leaning against the window overlooking the front garden, her back to them.  Remus stared after her, and discovered he was angry.  He was angry at her abandonment, for it meant she was choosing whatever this foolishness was over him, and angry too at whatever this foolishness was awaiting him, though he couldn't guess it on his life.  Now they asked questions?  Now they wanted to know?

A moment later he longed for lost ignorance.  James put a wallet in his hand.  It jangled.

He could hardly speak.  He didn't speak, not for a weird space that seemed to stretch out in front of him, hollow and rushing like being in a windy tunnel.  Money.  They were giving him money.

'Don't be proud,' Sirius said.

'Proud.'  He tried to give it back; James wouldn't take it.  Sirius shook his head, Peter looked at his feet.  'Proud,' Remus said.  'What am I to do with pride?  It doesn't spend.'

'Just take it,' James coaxed him.  'If you don't want us to know, we won't ask any more.  But you clearly need it.'

'To do what?  You know rent runs out?  What's a few more months of shelter?  A big meal tonight won't feed me tomorrow.  Money doesn't-- money doesn't solve anything.  Money doesn't fix me.'

'Moony.'

He slapped the wallet against Sirius' chest and let it fall when Sirius wouldn't grab it.  It hit the ground and spilled, gold Galleons plopping on the carpet.  'If I wanted your charity I'd have asked.  I'm not bloody proud.  I'm just smart enough to know it's futile.  Go save someone else.'

'I told you,' he heard Lily say, as he slammed out the front door.  He didn't give them time to chase him down.  He Apparated.

 

 

The camp was quiet.  Most of the men were sleeping.  Remus longed for his own pallet, his eyes burning holes in his head, his head light in exhaustion.  But he knew he wouldn't sleep.

He poked at the banked fire, adding a few clods of peat that would keep it burning til morning.  He soothed his thirst with a ladle of water from the bucket, wishing he'd not been persauded into that glass of wine.  He felt parched and pared too thin.

A snuffle caught his attention.  Calvin.  The old man sat upright with a cry, hand outstretched to the darkness.  Remus went to him.  'Here now,' he murmured, as Calvin turned tragic eyes to him.  'What's wrong?'

Calvin's gap-toothed jaws flapped.  'Where am I?' he asked quaverously.

'Home,' Remus said.  'You're safe.  Here.  I've brought you something.  A treat.'  He took a butterscotch from his pocket and unwrapped it.  Calvin clearly didn't recognise it, but once it was between his lips he lit with a satisfied smile.  Remus was able to persuade him to lay back, then, patting his shoulder.  He stayed until the old man slept again, and climbed to his feet on creaking knees.

'How's your pa, then.'

Greyback.  Remus inhaled frosty night air.  'Not much different,' he settled for saying.

'No tears?'  Greyback had been out past the camp's boundaries.  His thick wool coat was open at the throat, revealing sweat on skin.  He sat on the broken stool by the fire, wrenching off his boots and propping them near the embers.  'No hugs?'

'Never one for hugs.'

'Him or you?'

'Oh, I'm clearly a well-adjusted werewolf.  Cuddles and kittens galore.'  His sarcasm didn't go over well; Greyback stared at him with eyes that reflected gold.  Remus stared back as the silence grew long between them.  He said, then, 'I don't think I've ever seen it quite so clearly.'

'Seen what.'

'I'm not like them.  Am I.'  His hands were red with cold.  He should've taken Sirius' bloody gloves after all.  He breathed on them, but he was frozen through and there was no warmth from so paltry a measure.  'You made me,' he said, his voice falling dull beneath the crack of the last whole log in the fire.  'When I was with them, it was so easy to pretend.  I think I believed.  I can't anymore.  Whatever it is you made me, it's not like them.'

Greyback cleaned his nails with a splinter.  'I want you with me tomorrow.  Bring that wand of yours.'

'My wand?'  He rubbed at his mouth.  'Where are we going?'

No answer to that.  That seemed ominous.  But there was no banked danger in Greyback's form, no smell of blood on him, nor even any of the strange tension so often between them.  What it meant, Remus didn't know.  If indeed it meant anything at all.  His head was buzzing.

He left the rest of the butterscotch in a pile atop Tabrett's box of pots.  He'd brought enough to go around, less the one he'd just given Calvin.  Calvin would get another in the morning, if Remus skipped his own.  Well enough.  Even the sugar-sweet smell was nausaeating to him now.  Wordless, he tottered off, collapsing face-first to his pallet with its limp pillow roll.  He closed his eyes, and pretended to sleep.

 

**

 

The Portkey spat them out in a sprawl.  Remus only went to his knees, dragged down by the weight of the other two.  Lynch hurtled in a downhill roll, fetching to a stop in a splay-legged slap, pitched to his side, and vomitted breakfast.

Greyback had more practise at it, and was on his feet only a moment later.  Remus rubbed a twinge of headache from his temples.  He'd always hated Portkey travel.  He craned his head to look about.  Greyback had gone prowling, his gait taking him a twitchy turn about a cup-like valley.  Craggy rock hid them from east and south, and snowfall obscured everything else.  Some body of water was a churning grey mass all the way to the horizon.  The snow obscured his sense of the sun, too, and Remus couldn't orientate himself.  The North Sea, maybe.  They were clearly more northern than their campground.  He pulled his hood low over hair gone damp with icy exposure, shuddering.

'Who are we meeting?' he wondered, and Greyback turned keen eyes on him.

'You're not to talk,' Greyback ordered him.  'This is none of your business.  I only wanted a wizard.  You're only here to tell me if there's any shady magic, you understand?'

'I'd understand better if I knew what to look for,' Remus returned, tone mild.  'Hexes?  Anything aimed at us particularly?  Magic altogether?  There's magic here, in this place.'

Lynch staggered upright, swaying.  'Magic?' he said, pale-faced and paranoid.

'Wards.'  Remus pointed to a small cairn of stacked stones.  'Emanating from that.  I don't think it's malicious.  We're inside its radius, at any rate.'

'Anything else?'

'The Portkey.'  He'd recognised that magical signature, a soft pulse.  That, and it was an utterly ridiculous place for a lamp post, specially one upside and half-heartedly buried in the sandy soil.  Lots of wizards were careless in their choice of flotsam and rubbish to serve as portkeys, by definition a tool that must be left behind.  If an innocent Muggle stumbled over one and hopped across the country, too bad for them.

Greyback only grunted at that.  His pacing had taken him full circle.  He paused, a foot or so from Remus, and dropped into a waiting crouch, resting on his heels.  After a moment, Remus joined him.  Lynch spat in the scrub grass and drank from a flask in his coat.  He didn't share it round, but stood staring grimly out into the snow.

They waited perhaps a quarter hour-- time was impossible to note without a sun, and Remus had never brought his wristwatch to the werewolf camp-- but by the progress of incipient frostbite in his inadequately clothed body, he thought it no more than that.  He chafed his hands, flexed his fingers, trying to keep blood pumping to the tingling tips.  His wand would be useless if he couldn't hold it.

They had no warning but the pop and crack of bodies arriving by Portkey.  Greyback stood, Remus with him, Lynch coming in tight to Greyback's right.  Wizards.  Men in black robes, like ghosts in negative as they spread out fast through the snow.  They wore, Remus saw, suddenly sick in his gut, masks like skulls.  Each had wands of their own, and Remus put his up in the universal sign of surrender.  A dark chuckle passed through the crowd.

From their midst-- there were easily a dozen, possibly twenty, he couldn't count them and they wouldn't stand still for it-- came one whose robes were finer, flowing like silk in the fierce wind.  If he felt the cold, it didn't show; his back was unbowed, his shoulders straight.  He alone wore no mask.  His face was gaunt but well-formed, high cheekbones and eyes with blown pupils that made him eerie.  He, like all the others, bore his wand openly, but delicately, an overhand grip, as if he were a conductor about to set the orchestra to a waltz.

'Sweet Fenrir,' he said, and his voice was musical, too, low and rumbling, as if he spoke from the back of his throat.  'I see you bring guests.'

 _Don't,_ Remus wished fervently, but Greyback had sense enough, and in any case no introductions were performed on their side, either.  The masked men had spread into a long arc about them, caging the werewolves against the crags.  There they stopped, coming no closer, but even at a distance of mere feet Remus still couldn't count them, as if they blurred-- as if--

'Confundus Charm,' he murmured, just loud enough that Greyback tilted his head ever so slightly, but Lynch not at all.  Interesting, that.  He shouldn't have been able to tell.  Werewolf blood had its uses.

'Welcome, friends,' the unmasked man was saying.  His smile was charming, or should have been, but it curdled with something mad, and Remus shuddered at seeing it.  'No time for pleasantries, I'm afraid, but welcome indeed.  Welcome to our great undertaking.'

He sounded like Dumbledore.  The cadence of the words, the camaraderie.  Esprit-de-corps.  With that, Remus knew who he was.

'My Lord,' said one of the masked wizards.  'It does not bow in your presence.'

'Allies do not bow,' replied the low voice.  The man swept them with his gaze, landing on Greyback.  'And we are allies, are we not?'

'Can a dog be allied with its master?' someone jeered.  Greyback bared his canines.  Another laughed, and it passed through the arc, that sneering amusement.

'Now, now,' Lord Voldemort chided.  A cruel light in his eyes glowed almost without the light of his wand.  'It is true that decisions must be made.  Here, today.  So let us talk terms, Fenrir.'

Greyback nodded slowly.  'What's wrong with the current arrangement?'

'Your services.  Bite where directed.  Payment in full.  So trivial.  I'm thinking... expansion.  Out-sourcing, if you will.'

The bites Dumbledore had mentioned.  Greyback had been taking orders after all.  He'd been all over blood, the first time Remus had met him by the river.  Dry-mouthed, Remus looked away.  Or did til Greyback latched a hand over his wrist.  Tight, burning tight grip.

'You have some twenty werewolves in your little tribe.  I want them.  In fact, I want all the werewolves.'

They could spread a plague with that many loose on a full moon.

'I can't control that many,' Greyback said bluntly.  'The wolfsbane doesn't work the same on everyone.'

Lord Voldemort angled his eyes toward one of his men.  There was a moment's lag, thought, perhaps, and then a diffident answer from one near the far end.

'The potion can be improved, my Lord,' the man said.

Something about the accent was familiar.  Slightly nasal.  He'd heard that voice before.  He knew one of these men.

'Excellent.'  Lord Voldemort spread his hands, his wand making a graceful swish.  'There you have it, Fenrir.  An army of werewolves under your control, fully capable of following your orders.'

Greyback's hand on his wrist clamped tight enough to hurt.  Remus ground his teeth.  'Payment,' Greyback said.

Wands came up.  Voldemort's did not, pointed harmlessly away, and his voice slid around the thrum of fury all about him, sly and saccharine.  'Payment?  I thought sheer love of your work was all you desired.'

'You want an army.  Armies have to eat.'

'We can leave a dish outside the kennel for you,' someone cracked, and that was when it all went to shit.

It wasn't Greyback who lost his temper, but Lynch.  His low growl was startlingly animalistic, but the bunched fists and murderous intent were all human.  He had it only a step before one of the robed men cast a spell.  Lynch was no wizard, defenceless and exposed, and Remus reacted without thinking.  The curse rebounded off his hasty shield.  Lynch flinched back, no doubt startled by something he could hear and feel but not see, and with him out of the way Remus followed through just as he'd been taught in duelling club, the block and the counter.  He threw _Impedimenta_ and deflected a _Petrificus_ ; meaning to end it there, he put up his wand again, but caught someone from his left in a casting, and attacked first with a shouted ' _Incarcero!_ '

'RJ!' Greyback barked at him, trying to pull him back, but the balance had tipped, and there was only one man who could end it.  End it Voldemort did.

' _Crucio,_ ' he said, almost lazily, and the curse blasted past Remus' half-constructed deflector and hit him square in the chest.

It was worse than anything he'd ever felt before.  Every transformation under every moon of his life, the breaking of bones, the rending of his human flesh.  It seared.  He screamed, but that brought no relief; he writhed, fallen, in the snow, every nerve in him afire.  He did not die.  He did not die, it just went on-- on-- blood from his own bitten tongue spilled bright red in the snow, choking him, locking him in a rictus of agony--

'Enough!'  Greyback stood over him.  'Enough, or you'll have your war right here and now.  See if you can control one of your Death Eaters when he turns wolf.'

Respite was so sudden he felt plunged into numbness.  To go from too much to too little feeling was a shock enough to drop him spinning to the edge of consciousness.  There were stars behind his eyes.  He gagged.  He was face-down in the snow, ice clenched in his impotent fists.  He'd dug such deep rivets with his knees and hands that he'd come up with frozen dirt.

'I think you have the measure of my seriousness,' Voldemort purred.  'And I have the measure of yours.  So.  Can we reach a deal?'

'Bring me that improved wolfsbane,' Greyback said.

That answer seemed to serve.  Voldemort gestured, and his men fell back.  'Til next time, dear friend,' Voldemort promised, and they faded back into the snow and were gone.

Greyback yanked him up by the shoulders into the path of a slap.  'Never again!' Greyback snarled at him.  His hand at Remus' throat was crushing, and Remus fought, dragging at his arm and at the bared teeth inches from his face.  'You stupid fool boy!' Greyback ranted at him, kicking him down and landing another boot in his hip, and then kneeling on him, ready to choke.  But he didn't.  It hurt, but only a shadow of that awful curse, and there was something odd in Greyback's hesitation.

'Why,' Remus wheezed.  'You're nothing to them.'

Greyback slapped him again.  It was, he realised after, open-handed, meant to sting, not wound.  To knock some sense into him.  'Stupid fool,' Greyback said again.  'You think we've any choice in it?'

It was Lynch who got him standing.  The older man glared, sullen, no thanks for Remus' intervention that had likely saved his life.  Greyback was steaming in the snow, still radiating rage, but when he observed Remus could hardly walk he provided reluctant aid.  They dragged him along as he floundered in the snow.  The Portkey.  They hardly touched it before it propelled them off, and no amount of practise had prepared Remus for a hard landing when he had so little control over his limbs.  Winded, head pounding, he lay where he fell.  The little sounds of the woods crept in on him, like the chill.  No snow here, but not near warm enough to lay exposed on the ground.  His hood had fallen off, sometime during the curse.  He squeezed his eyes tightly shut when he realised that.  They'd seen his face, all those men.  Only someone arrogantly sure of his safety would go bare-headed-- Lord Voldemort had nothing to fear, clearly, not if he were so powerful.  The weight of his magic.  Remus shuddered again.  Well, what of it.  Greyback and Lynch had been unmasked, too, and what werewolf wouldn't be?  They could hardly lose more standing in wizarding society.  If his secret were known--

He remembered, then.  He'd known that voice.  One of those wizards had been someone he knew.

He crawled down the bank of the river.  Shaky, yes, but recovering.  He washed his face, slicked back his hair with a trembling hand.  Drank handful after handful.  Drank in the little noises of the woods, the bird calls, the flap of wings, the rustle of leaves.  It would be peaceful, if not for the werewolf in the middle of it.

When his grip slipped on the handholds out of the ravine, a hand clasped his and leveraged him out.  Greyback.  Remus swallowed hard.  'Thanks,' he whispered.

'Come on,' Greyback said gruffly, and let Remus lean on him a little as they limped back to camp.  Lynch fell in behind them.  Remus could feel eyes on his back, and when he glanced, Lynch was scowling.


	5. His Soul Expanded.  But For A Moment Only.

_I can't offer a description beyond the mask, and the farther I get from the incident the more I doubt myself,_ Remus wrote.  His pencil scratched oddly at the parchment, but quill and ink had little place in his life at the moment, and he'd been lucky to steal this away from Erik and his crosswords.  _But I was sure then.  For it to be someone I'd recognise by voice alone, they must be someone I was close to, familiar with.  A schoolmate, perhaps.  I realise this hardly narrows potential candidates.  As for the others, the Confundus Charm prevented an accurate assessment.  It doesn't appear to work on us as it must others; in fact I believe they were relying upon the Charm to induce ready agreement from G.  There was little incentive beyond silken tones and they might have expected him to simply fall in with their proposal.  I don't know if that's an edge, but it's at least a factor, whichever way the winds blow on.  As for Him: my memory may not be trustworthy, but I can offer this much.  I thought him perhaps fifty years of age, near to my height, both well-built and fragile.  He may be ill of something; as if he were being eaten from within._

A noise distracted him from his letter.  Remus looked up, wary.  But it didn't repeat.

_There's something else.  The potion we took is confirmed now to come from His crowd.  The voice I recognised seems to be the man responsible for its preparation.  Its base ingredient is inimical to our kind, but the modifications seem designed to produce a kind of self-control never historically achievable.  I don't believe I exaggerate when I say this modification could change the face of things drastically.  I have no real way of examining the materials, but perhaps someone with more extensive knowledge in the field could hypothesise with what little evidence is availa_

The noise stopped his pencil and the thought behind it.  This time he was sure.  It was a footstep.

Rapidly he finished the word, folded the parchment, and stuffed it into Winfred's beak.  'Be off,' he whispered.  He scrambled to his feet and grabbed the line of grouse from his hunting.  He ducked Winfred's tree and tugged his hood up til the furred rim tickled his nose.

'Hallo,' he said.

Lynch didn't reply.  He'd been trailing Remus a few days now, never far away for long.  Remus wasn't sure what had changed, other than that it had started after the day they'd met the dark wizards.  Lynch watched him at odd moments.  He'd even followed Remus to the latrine last night.

'Hunting?' Lynch asked now.

In answer Remus lifted his catch.  'There's not much game left.  We need to go farther out; or buy meat in the town.'

Lynch scratched his beard.  'Greyback takes care of it.'

Remus hunched a shoulder.  'Well... maybe we could anticipate his need.'

'You're all about his needs, eh.'

Remus gnawed his lip.  'I'm all about being fed.'  He took a step, and Lynch moved directly in his path.  He took another, wider to the left, and Lynch turned as Remus went around him.  When Remus looked back, however, Lynch had gone.  A line of prints in the snow led off the way Remus had come, cresting the hill and disappearing.

Remus shivered.  One day, he'd slip, and that'd be that.  But he hadn't today, he didn't think.

That would have to be good enough for a dreary morning.

 

**

 

'I'm going to my father's,' Remus said quietly.

Greyback didn't look up from his porridge, stirring out the lumps with a rusting spoon.  'Give him my regards.'

'Much as I might enjoy watching the two of you duel over who can be the biggest dick, I'll pass.'  That earned him a little snort that was almost laughter.  Remus tugged at his earlobe.  He'd even given thought to staying on at camp through Christmas night, but knew Dumbledore wanted a full report, and this was the most natural excuse.  He wasn't the only one leaving, for once: Pol had a sister in Birmingham, and the permanently-scowling Dixon, of all people, had a grown son.

But for the others staying on, it was a grim time to be alone, and Remus tried to walk the line between kindness and butting in where he wasn't wanted.  He'd spent his own money on a special trip into town, buying a Christmas pudding and another bag of oranges at the market.  Gifts were harder, and had required a trip even more secret than that, accomplished only the night before whilst everyone slept.  Remus gave up dithering and dropped his package in Greyback's lap.  'It's not much,' he said.  'But I've given one to everyone and you get yours as well.  Happy Christmas.'

Greyback's spoon paused halfway to his mouth.  'What?'

'Maybe it won't mean anything to you.  I don't know.  But it means something to me, that's why I've done it.  No other reason.'

'What is it,' Greyback said slowly.

'Traditionally, one opens it to find out.'

He stood tensed for any of a number of imagined scenarios.  Greyback could fire the porridge into his face.  Fling a fist instead.  Kill him for the presumption.  Or, as Alastor Moody had threatened, dump all offending packages into the nearest lake.

None of that happened.  Greyback wiped his mouth on his sleeve, ripped open the brown paper, and turned the book's cover into the grey light.

'Fairytales,' Remus said.  'I thought you could read 'em to me fore you tuck me in at night.  Bet you'd be good at the monster voices.'

Amber eyes slanted up to his.  'Are you-- are you mocking me?'

'Yeah,' Remus said.  He shrugged.  'They're filthy stories,' he admitted.  'It was my grandfather's.  They're silly, mostly.  Funny.  So.  Happy Christmas.'

'So you're the librarian now, eh.'  Greyback paged through, stopping when he found the pictures.  'They aren't moving.'

'He was a Muggle.'  Remus chewed his lower lip.  'What about yours?  Your family?'

Greyback looked up.  He let the book fall closed.  He said, 'I hatched.'

Remus bit back a smile.  'I'll be back tomorrow.  And--'

'You talk too much, RJ,' Greyback said.  He put the book at his feet and returned to his meal.  'Go on.  No peace with you about.'

'And good night,' Remus finished, and obeyed.  He always left camp to Apparate, anyway, though none of the others had the magic to follow him.  Habit was habit-- such as the cautious glance over his shoulder, wary of any prying eyes, but Tabrett had Lynch locked in conversation by the fire, Jules had broken out the dice for a game, and Greyback-- was reading the book.  His lips moved with the words, until, slow and startled, he laughed.

 

 

It was not Summerlea House, for once, but Hogwarts to which he travelled.  Remus had not been on school grounds since his final day as a student, which had actually been a day later than everyone else, final departure having fallen over a full moon.  He'd waked, seventeen and alone, to a lonely infirmary, all the beds but his rolled up on their frames, windows clear overlooking the green lawns of an empty castle.  Gryffindor's Head of House escorted him to Hogsmeade, setting him off with no manner of transport home and no home to go to.  His father had long made it clear Remus was not welcome to return.  He'd lingered, ill with malaise and a bad bite to his calf that made walking difficult, doing chores for the sweet Madam Rosmerta that surely hadn't truly paid for his room.  That she'd kept him a week was a kindness he could never adequately repay, but he'd tried.  Hogsmeade had been his home that first summer in the world beyond Hogwarts, and there was not a building in the village but bore some small improvement he'd made by magic or by hand.  But Hogsmeade had taught him the most important lesson of his early adulthood: a werewolf alone went from neighbour to menace in the small hours of a single morning, and there was no map back to fit citizen once suspicion was aroused.  He'd left Hogsmeade, the Shrieking Shack, the Three Broomsticks.  And treaded water for three years.  Here he was, no different than when he'd gone-- a little shabbier, a little thinner.

Nostalgia was a painful thing, but he indulged it.  There was the Astronomy Tower, where he'd gone dozens of times to be closer to the stars, to be alone with his gloomy thoughts; to be alone with the occasional girl, and, once he'd figured out some things, the occasional boy.  He'd never been as handsome as James and Sirius, only as dashing as you could be when you were perpetually tired and not terribly athletic and known generally as 'the clever one'.  There was their spot in the Quidditch stands, where he and Peter and Sirius had cheered on James at every game for five years.  Peter had mis-spelt Gryffindor on the first banner they'd ever made, but they'd kept it and flew it every time for the joke of it.  Oh, and the castle, the castle had been their ground, hadn't it.  At the time prowling a lot of empty corridors had been a little boring, though they'd romanticised it as soon as could be and considered themselves quite brave.  The Marauder's Map had been years in the making, he did miss that, having put rather more effort at times into the map than any of his assignments.  It seemed a shame, it mouldering away in Filch's office, but it was hardly useful to anyone now and hadn't truly been especially useful to the Marauders themselves.  Their accomplishments had been such minor things, children's ideas of grand larks.  Bangarangs in the Slytherin toilets, that had been Sirius' favourite adventure, though Remus had preferred using the invisibility cloak to get into the Ravenclaw common room and file their private library out of order in the middle of the night.  James had thought it boring and rather too much like work, but Remus had laughed and laughed over the sheer rage it inspired in his scholarly classmates.  By graduation there'd been rumours of a haunting.

Dumbledore hosted his guests in the Great Hall, of course, though Remus was glad to see it was not one of Summerlea's full parties, but a small crowd of adults like himself who had no family or friends otherwise.  There were no students this year, though Remus couldn't help but look down the hall at the spot he'd sat in, every year, the far end of the Gryffindor table, braving it out alone and distracting himself with dreams of exploring the Forest or something terribly heroic.  He'd even managed it a few times, though Professor Kettleburn had caught onto his game in sixth year and started dogging him over the holidays.  Dumbledore enchanted them a lovely ceiling of frosted mountains and waves of aurora borealis, and a discussion of the merits of various illusion spells occupied the guests til dinner was served.

Remus was seated between Minerva McGonagall and Dedalus Diggle.  Severus Snape spent the meal ignoring Emmaline Vance, who was wearing a very unfortunate hat that meowed on the quarter hour.  Dumbledore sat at the head of the table, constantly turned to his right to discuss the ins and outs of the upcoming election with Sturgis Podmore.  The goose was excellent, the orange sauce tangy and sweet, the roast potatoes divine.  Remus ate his fill and then some, and indulged the wine as well, and even let himself be talked into a second helping of cherries jubilee.  The house elves had thimbles of brandy and errupted into a celebration of their own, stampeding down the corridors beyond the Hall and then falling to sleep as if the chime of ten o'clock were the witching hour; they curled in little sighing piles in the corners, long ears twitching as they dreamt.

There was, at some point, carols on the wireless, and Dumbledore himself handed round champagne.  Remus gave away the last of his books to the Headmaster, who beamed as if he'd won the lottery and in turn gifted him with a pair of new boots.  Remus blushed over them, wary of comment from the others, but it seemed to have gone unobserved, and he quickly tucked them away.

In the small hours of what was, by then, early morning of Christmas Day, Remus trudged through the snow to the owlery.  With the fattening crescent of the moon overhead, Remus needed no wand to light his way.  He climbed the West Tower slowly, wary of ice but mostly just enjoying the prick of icy air on his cheeks.  Most of the owls would be out indulging in a bit of flight, or a hunt for a Christmas feast of their own in the Forest, but a few had stayed on their perches and cooed indulgently when Remus stroked their feathers.  He bribed them with bits of dinner saved in a pocket, and sent off a small sleek saw whet to Peter, a spectacled owl to James and Lily, and chose a majestic hawk owl for Sirius, though the spectacled could have carried all three cards.  Off they flew into the night with their tiny packages.  Remus would be unable to receive any reply, though he didn't know at this point but that he'd successfully alienated his friends anyway.  He didn't regret turning down the money, still deeply offended by the ignorance of the offer.  But he'd cooled enough to realise it was, in their prattish way, the only thing they really knew to do for him.  And that was at least partially Remus' fault.  At Hogwarts everything had been so easy, so natural, for all the sneaking.  They'd done great things for him then.  That they weren't children anymore wasn't to their blame.  They had good work, good homes, and he wanted them to have those things.  He'd always known that the time would come when they'd leave him behind, to the point of accelerating it in hopes it would hurt less. It hadn't, but with it all to do again he'd have done the same. Better those short years of joy than this lonely half-life.  That was worth a deep breath, a deeper sigh, and nothing more but acceptance.

He ran into Snape on his way to the gate.  Snape had dressed for bed already, green silk pyjamas beneath a dark grey housecoat.  Remus brushed back his furred hood, offering a smile.  'Last rounds?' he asked.

'One of the ghosts saw you pass,' Snape answered.  'I,' he added, but swallowed the rest of whatever he'd been about to say.  Remus shuffled, scraping a bit of snow from his boot.  'You've a bit of stray garland on you,' Snape observed then.

Remus picked his collar.  'Professor Sprout was a bit over-enthusiastic with her crackers.'

'Not quite,' Snape said, and reached, and hesitated, and then followed through as if sticking his hand into open flame.  He took a slip of gold confetti from Remus' hair, just over his ear.  It was the barest of touches, but Remus blushed.  Severus plied the strip over his knuckle, and then put it in his pocket.  At that, Remus blushed even redder.

'I'll let you get on,' he managed.  'Thanks.  For checking on me.  Not lost, just-- dawdling.  I.'  I indeed.  'Good night,' he said.

Snape nodded.  'Then safe travels.'

'Sn-- Severus?'  He hesitated in his turn, and committed by fully facing Snape again.  'Only I've been plagued with thinking on it and haven't lit on the answer yet.  You might know.  Dumbledore... I... came back to this place-- was brought back to Summerlea House, by magic, one... night... a bit ago.'

'You mean the full moon,' Snape said, with evident distaste, or so Remus thought.

He could feel the heat in his cheeks.  'Yes,' he said bluntly.  'I was incapacitated.  I am always incapacitated.  I didn't have my wand, any of my things.  But someone found me and brought me back to Summerlea House.  I've been trying to think how I could have been located without any tokens linked to me.'

Snape stared off down the arcade of arches, eerie in their emptiness, the wind winding like a living creature through the stones.  'Dumbledore's letters,' he said at length.  'You will of course have noticed that they are unerringly addressed.'

'I had.'  Like the first that had come to his tent in Abernethy.  'Locations I understand.  There's not that many unplottables.  But me, alone, in the middle of-- I didn't even know where I was.  You don't think it's the bird, do you?  Winfred?  If that's a normal owl I'll eat him.'

'Oh, doubtless.'  Snape's eyes transferred to him, dark, evaluating, sharing nothing.  'The letters,' he said again.  'I think it's possible it's something to do with the letters.  Tracers of some kind, perhaps.  Something that enhances with each contact.'

'I suppose it's academic.'  Remus pushed his hair behind his ears.  'It may be a good thing.  I suppose I'll know after the next moon.'

'The next moon?'

Secrets.  There was no good blabbing something only to earn himself a reprimand from Dumbledore.  So far as Remus knew, no-one had yet been told what he was up to or where he did it, or he'd have been spared that horrid encounter with the Marauders.  Though perhaps Dumbledore could be persuaded to allow Snape into confidence; he was a Potions expert, after all--

Potions.

Potions.  He was a bloody fool.

'Ah.'  He began to laugh, and Snape's eyes snapped back to him.  'You,' Remus said.  'It was you.'

'When was me?  During the moon?'

'What do you teach again, here at Hogwarts?'

'Potions,' Snape said, and his face had gone still, the muscles all frozen.

He'd known that accent when he'd heard it.  His own Mancunian dialect made it _poh-chuns_.  Snape was southern, and he had a very distinct enunciation.  It was a mark of the old Pure Blood families.

'In the spirit of academic curiosity,' Remus whispered, 'did you join Voldemort or the Order first?'

'Don't say his name.'  Snape went so far as to touch him, or nearly, his hand coming toward Remus' mouth.  Remus flinched back, and the hand hovered between them.  'I don't owe you any explanation.'

'No?  Let's fetch Dumbledore out of bed and see how he agrees with you or not.  You were there that day.  And that curse-- that was an Unforgiveable.  You watched--'

'I've watched,' Snape repeated, with barely any voice at all.  'I've seen horrible things.  Yes.'

Still the hand hovered.  Snape had elegant hands, with long tapered fingers.  There was a faint shadow to the creases of his palms, dark blue veins in his wrist and thumb.

'Dumbledore trusts you,' Remus said.

'Dumbledore trusts you.  We don't need to trust each other.'

Maybe it was the revelation, or the late hour.  Or the champagne.  Or two months in the cold winter, amongst men who were the worst part of himself, his worst fears for himself.  He laughed.  Snape looked at him as if he were mad, and possibly he was, for he laughed, but only because he was suddenly, intolerably sad.

'Don't tell anyone about the wolfsbane,' Snape said, what seemed a very long time later.  'We need controls in the experiment.  Greyback is monitoring his pack.'

'We're not dogs.  We don't run in packs.  It's people.  Men who had families and jobs and homes, before they were bitten.'

'We need controls,' Snape repeated.  'Impartial observation of the effects.'

'What specifically.'

Snape paused with lips parted.  'What?'

'What specifically.  Impartial you can get from Greyback.  You want detail, you need a trained observer.  That's me.  Tell what to look for and I'll give you what you need.'

'Lucidity,' Snape said, after a pause even more excruciating than before.  'How long it lasts.  When the... transformation... begins to fade, if there's any change from routine.  Odd or inexplicable behaviour during the transformation.'

'If he can control lucid werewolves, they'll bite on demand.'

'Or they can knowingly refuse.  I know what you would do.'

'Remus, Severus.'

Dumbledore.  He stood just beyond the great doors, the swing of the clock's great hand whoosing behind him.  His owl, Winfred, launched with a flap of great wings, swooping up and away toward the owlery Remus had just left.

The Headmaster joined them, slippered feet making no sound at all as he descended the steps to the courtyard.  Dumbledore, too, had been abed before he'd come out, and wore a long cotton shirt with a matching cap.  His beard had been braided for the evening and was tied off neatly with a blue ribbon.  He laid a wizened hand on Remus' arm.

'Headmaster?' Snape asked.  Wordlessly Dumbledore handed him a small scrap of parchment.  Snape, already pale, was pinched white once he read it.  He shared it with Remus next.

It was only three lines, in a quickly dashed-off hand unfamiliar to him.  Names.  'Benjy Fenwick,' Remus read aloud.  'Confirmed.  Dorcas Meadows, confirmed.  Caradoc Dearborn; presumed.'  He looked up, suddenly dry-mouthed.  'You knew,' he said.

'I suspected,' Dumbledore began, but Remus ignored him.  To Snape, he raised his chin.  After only the smallest of hesitations, Snape nodded.

Dumbledore squeezed Remus' arm.  'Severus brought us the warning.'

'But not in time to stop it.'

'No,' Snape said hollowly.

I've seen things, Snape had said, only minutes ago.  Remus stared down at the parchment.  He'd had a month of clumsy kisses in the Astronomy Tower with Benjy.  Shy smiles.  He'd called Remus Moony, having heard James use it, never knowing what it really meant.

'He knows about the Order,' Remus guessed.

'Or knows at least that there are certain persons set to intercept or observe his activities.'  Dumbledore passed a weary hand over his eyes.  'I'd hoped we'd have longer.  I fear this means our war is begun in earnest.'

First casualties.  Yes.  Blood spilt.

'Are you safe?' Remus asked Snape.

'Are any of us?'

'Severus.'

'So long as he has use for me.'

There was both too much and not enough to say to that.  He felt too much on hearing it.  He was numb from gut to fingertip.  He didn't even notice when Dumbledore took back the parchment.

'Sleep,' Dumbledore said.  'We will mourn each in our own way.  I will get word to those who must know.  Til then-- sleep, my boys.'

 

 

His face was wet, when he Apparated back to the river beyond the werewolf camp.  He wiped his cheeks on his sleeves.  Shouldn't have gone.  And hadn't even managed a moment alone with Dumbledore for his report, he realised.  He closed his eyes and dropped his head back on his neck.  Useless.  A waste, going all that way a meal and a few hours in human company.  Indulging him?  Coddling him, the way Peter and James and Sirius had tried?  A Christmas dinner was no different to a bag of galleons.  It didn't solve anything.

And Dumbledore could have _told_ him about the wolfsbane.  He'd not have fought it so hard if he'd known it part of some scheme.  Secrets, so many secrets, and Snape.  Snape.  I know what you would do.  Well, he might think he did, a man who'd come face to face with a werewolf and lived only because James had called it off and gone after him.  Remus knew very well what he'd do, if he could.  Run.  Run and never, ever come back.

Benjy, Dorcas, Caradoc.  He'd known them.  Liked them.

He only registered his wand in his hand when the magic left him in a furious burst.  The curse blew a tree to toothpicks.

 

 

**

 

 

He was moody in the week running up to New Year, though in a camp of werewolves nearing a full moon, he was hardly the only one.  Everyone was snippy and short-tempered, and a surprise storm that dumped a foot of snow on them helped nothing.  Remus indulged in a rare public show of his magic to clear their grounds, but found himself plagued with questions he was in no wise planning to answer.  Muggles, even Muggle werewolves, had glaring misconceptions about Wizarding society, and Remus rapidly tired of correcting increasingly ridiculous notions.  Jules started a bet that he could be tricked or badgered into a demonstration of spellwork, and Remus spent two days harried and shouting as otherwise reasonable men went to lengths to provoke him.

It was Greyback put an end to it.  Remus came back from washing dinner plates to find the camp chastened and silent.  Greyback sat alone at the fire, pride of place on the log he usually claimed, and on such a cold day he should have been surrounded by the others, but even Tabrett was elsewhere.  Remus boxed away the dishes and dropped into a crouch a few feet to Greyback's left.  No-one would meet his eyes.  Erik lifted a brow and shrugged an apology.  Remus chewed his lower lip, chafing frozen hands over the flames.

'Thanks,' he said.

Greyback grunted.  'Yapping biddies, the lot of 'em.'

'They're hungry.'

The older man was scowling.  He always scowled.

Remus shifted to put his back to the log, stretching his boots as close to the fire as he could go without toasting the soles.  'We should go,' he said then.  'This place isn't enough for so many men.  There's no game left.'

'Go where.'

'North.'  He picked at a new hole in his trouser leg.  'If they cared at all, those men, they'd see we didn't starve or freeze.'

'Who?' Greyback looked up, to the sulking werewolves huddled by the tent.  Lynch was in charge of erecting it, and it was a process much compounded by irritable nerves.  Compounded by Lynch stopping every few moments to stare after Remus.  Something was brewing there.  Remus hadn't decided yet whether to push it to an open airing or pretend obliviousness.

'The men who make the wolfsbane,' Remus said.

Greyback snorted.  'Nothing's free.'

'Still.  That's pricing yourself a bit cheap.'  No immediate answer, and Greyback was only sour, not angry, so Remus pressed a little further than he'd ever yet dared.  'That one,' he said.  'The one in charge.  He said he wanted all the werewolves.  How many of us are there?'

'How should I know?'

'You know things.'

'You're the one with schooling and books.  What they teach you about werewolves in Hogwarts?'

'Fat lot of nonsense,' Remus said.  'Cept for how to kill us.  They always get that right.  Do you know?  How many of us there are?'

'No, I don't bloody know, RJ.'  Greyback scowled into the fire, scowled at the hazy sky, scowled at Remus.  'There's ferals,' he said abruptly.  'Not many.  Maybe fifty.  Born to it, second generation.  It can pass to children, you know.'

He hadn't known that.  It shook him.  'Then... then the ferals...'

'Do it on purpose.'  Greyback spat.  The fire swallowed his spittle with a hiss.  'Passing on the gift.  That's what they call it.  Some of them count the line back decades.  Got their family tree all legendary, like the Pure Bloods.  Some of them can transform without a moon, I heard.'

Remus curled his toes in his boots.  'You the one who talks to them?  For that man?  They'd want the wolfsbane.  Whatever other promises he makes.'

'Talk to them,' Greyback muttered.  'You don't talk to animals.  Run about with loincloths and face paint like some kind of savages.  Namin' themselves after real wolves.'

'Like Greyback.'

Another grunt.  'Like Remus Lupin.  Thought that were funny, yer dad all proud of a stupid wizard name.   Like paintin' a red target all over your back.'

'It wasn't my back you bit.'

Greyback gave him a knock with a fist.  It didn't hurt; in fact it was almost fond.  Remus tilted his head, baring his throat, and rough fingerpads travelled his bare skin, dipping below the collar of his shirt.  They looked at each other, as Greyback's thumb found the hollow of his throat and pressed lightly.  Remus inhaled the scent of pitchy fire, clean wet snow, a few too many men who'd gone a few too many days without bathing, dirt, woods... beneath it all, the stale iron smell of old blood.  There beneath Greyback's fingernails, rims of red like the stains on his coat.

 

 

**

 

 

He took the wolfsbane the next morning.  His lack of resistance was noticed, and occasioned some joshing, but most seemed to take it as a sign of his acceptance of their way of things, and in turn they accepted him.  He was invited that night to the dice game between Jules and Erik, and Pol engaged him in a talk about the book Remus had given him for Christmas.  Tabrett asked his opinion of wizarding spices for the dinner stew.

The second day was markedly worse.  Calvin fell ill almost immediately after the morning dose, retching yellowish bile and falling into a fitful unconsciousness.  Remus tried to care for him, but horrible cramps confined him to his own palet.  By the evening dose he had a splitting headache, seeing dimly and painfully that the sun was setting.  The moonrise was yet some hours away, but he was parched.  He checked Calvin, and found him burning with fever.  'Water,' Remus called, or thought he did, but no-one answered.  He staggered through the oddly empty camp.  Some of the men slept, others sat in silence and solitude.  Remus went to his knees before the water bucket.  There was a bare mouthful in it.  The nearest canteens were empty, too.  They needed water.

The river had never seemed farther away, nor harder to get to.  Remus had cleared a path after the bad snowfall, but that had melted over again as rain slicked it down to solid ice, and uphill was quite treacherous in places.  He had sweated through his shirt despite the cold, and left a pile of scarf and gloves before chinking a hole in the ice to gather the riverwater.  He sloshed all over himself climbing the ravine, and had to stop, hands to his pounding temples.  Snape would need to change this.  The transformation was awful enough without human pain for days on either end.  Couldn't be borne.  Couldn't--

'Schoolboy,' Lynch said.  He hadn't heard anyone coming.  Lynch uprighted the bucket.  'Fool boy,' Lynch muttered.

'Calvin,' Remus said thickly.  'He needs.'

'The old man'll be lucky to make it through the moon.  Get up.'

He couldn't make it without help.  Lynch slung Remus' arm about his shoulder and all but carried him, and for a moment Remus wasn't sure where he was, if he was back in that mountain with Voldemort and the Dark Wizards cursing him.  Cruciatus, Cruciatus.  But it was home, his woods, his snow, stumbling over his own feet and falling because the moon was rising, that was all.

Lynch let him go the second time, and he went down.  Scraped his hand on the rough bark of a tree trying to slow his way.  His knee hurt, for a moment, then just went numb.

'Schoolboy,' Lynch said again, or maybe the first time.  It was all jumbled in his head.  His head hurt so much.  'That's why he respects you.'  The way the word 'respect' dripped contemptuously off Lynch's tongue suggested something else entirely.  'That wizarding school of yours.  Tarted up education, that stick you carry.'  Lynch snorted.  'If he could see you now.'

Was that the moon?  No.  Only a snowy owl.  It hooted urgently, but stayed high in the branches overhead.

'Your father, eh?'  Lynch glowered at the owl.  'Lookin' out some cozy window somewhere, all this snow.  Thinkin' about his poor boy freezing to death, I wager.  Me, if I had a father making nice, I'd take it both hands.  Not you.  You keep coming back.  Now why is that, I ask myself.  Why's a clever lad like you always coming back to a wreck like this place when you've got the option?'

'Which problem do you actually have with me?' Remus managed.  Oh, so dizzy.  He closed his eyes, but the vertigo only worsened.  'That I chose this over some imaginary perfect home life?  That I had some imaginary privileged boarding experience?  They put me in an abandoned house during the moon.  Could have been shot-- could've been shot for trespassing as soon as being a werewolf, but if they'd known a werewolf was there, they, they.'  He lost the thread for a moment.  Pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes.  'Those wizards who came to tell you what you are?  They're Aurors.  They give you one chance.  They can use Killing Curses on dark creatures, you know, and that's what we are.  Creatures.  And they make us register and they monitor our work and they hate us.  They hate us.  There's no going back.  There's no place for me.'

It was no good.  Or maybe he'd not really said anything at all in his own defence, for he blinked and the world re-started and he just didn't know.  Lynch was a black mark against all the white all around, and the white owl overhead said, soft and insistent, 'Coo, coo, coo.'

Lynch set down the bucket.  There was a knife in his fist, a big long knife with serrated teeth.  'I see what you're up to, you know,' Lynch whispered.  'Ingratiating yourself with the others.  Sneaking off whenever there's a moment.  I've warned him.'

It was short and nasty.  Remus never made it to his feet.  Lynch was on him, and they had an impromptu, lurching wrestle in the snow; he reached for his wand in his boot, but Lynch knew where he carried it, and before he could more than grasp the handle Lynch jerked him back by the hair and set the blade to his throat.

'Easy,' Lynch whispered.  'Easy now.  I'll be having that.'

Remus put his hands out to his sides.  Lynch threw the wand off into the trees; Remus tried to mark where it fell, to his left and back by the notched oak.  The knife at his throat was serrated, a weapon for stabbing and sawing, not slicing, but its teeth caught at his skin and drew blood well enough.  Lynch yanked him up by the hood of his coat, and Remus stood.  Lynch shoved him up against the nearest tree trunk and patted him down roughly, sliding hands into all of Remus' pockets and even beneath his shirts.

'What you even looking for?' Remus dared.

'Shut up, RJ.'  The blade dug in, and Remus arched away from it.  'Where is it?'

'Where's what?'

'Whatever you're hiding.'

'I'm not bloody hiding anything.  You think I'm that daft?'

'No.  No, you're a clever one, aren't you.'  Lynch breathed heavily in his ear.  'Magic,' he said.

'I am _not hiding_ anything.  I've nothing _to_ hide.'

'No?  No, you do it right in front of us, don't you.  I see it.  You're always lookin' at him, finding your way to him.  Is that--'  Lynch laughed suddenly.  'Oh, that's it, yeah?  Is this what you do for him?'

Fingers curved taut down his backside.  Remus tensed, understanding in a flash.  And it was the understanding that damned him.  Lynch knew he knew, and knowing made him guilty of doing.

'You get on your knees for him?'  This time the knife was meant to cut, and it did.  Blood tricked down his neck, no matter how he strained away.  Lynch pinned him between knife and knee.  'You suck him off, you queer?  You put your queer mouth on him?  Or you let him bugger you like a woman?  That it?  That it?'  A sick wet sound in Remus' ear was Lynch sucking on his fingers, and Remus comprehended it in the space between the noise and the sudden wet assault as Lynch dug a hand down the back of his trousers and penetrated him.

'No,' Remus hissed, twisting, but that knife at his throat kept him in place, ripping at his throat.  'No, get off me, get off me--'

'Does he fuck you?  You moan for him?  Do me like you do him, you filthy faggot.'

'Get away from me!'  Remus shoved wildly, and Lynch sliced him falling off.  Remus clapped a hand to his neck.  He dove to the left, scrabbling through the snow.  Wand.  Wand.  He grabbed for it, no, stick-- Remus huddled against a pine, forcing himself to think, to breathe.  Be sure.  Crack of ice, the owl hooted--

The knife pierced his shoulder.  Remus went down with a cry, and Lynch stabbed again, deflecting off his ribs and tearing into the soft flesh of his stomach.

'Go home, schoolboy,' Lynch whispered.  'Or I'll make you wish I'd killed you outright.'

He was cold.  He lay in the snow, cold all over, alone.  There was something soothing about that.  There was no real sky overhead, and it was snowing again, little flakes that fell on his face and frosted his eyelashes like lace.  When he breathed, it hurt, but not for long, with everything going dark and strange.  The owl landed on the ground by him, flapping a wing in his face.  He could hardly roll his head away.  It bit his finger, first his thumb and then his wrist.  Remus tried to swallow.  Couldn't.  Couldn't anything.  Go, he tried to tell the owl, but couldn't remember quite why it was important.  Couldn't--

The moonlight broke through the trees, and carried his scream on pale beams.


	6. Maybe When People Longed For A Thing That Bad The Longing Made Them Trust In Anything That Might Give It To Them...

Whatever else could be said about the next two days of agony, there was one truth: the wolfsbane worked.

Remus had the presence of mind after his transformation to get as far as he could from camp.  He didn't know where the others had gone, and did not try to find them.  He did ensure he had his wand with him, clenched between his fangs, and his shirt, bursting buttons but clinging to his re-shaped torso, sleeves tangling his forepaws, survived as well as it never would have had he been pure werewolf.  In his wolf form he'd have ripped the thing to shreds, gnawed the wand to slivers like a chew toy, all for the scent of his human self.  After four doses of the wolfsbane, he could ignore that haunting odour-- still all too much tempted, but he could choose not to, and he marvelled at it.

He woke at moon-set in a field, in a little ditch he'd dug before the weakness of the transformation overcame him.  All about him were sheered stalks of some harvested plant, digging into his shoulders and legs.  There was snow, melted a bit from his body heat, still soft when he gathered it up in shaking hands.  He ate handfuls of it to ease his wracking thirst.  His trousers had not survived the night, and he shivered relentlessly.

A low hoot turned his head.  It was Winfred the owl.  The bird perched on a scare-crow, staring him down.

'I'll splinch myself,' Remus told it.  'I can't.'

'Coo,' said Winfred.

'A lot of bloody help you've been.'  It was the concentrated effort of long painful minutes, getting even so far as his hands and knees.  The wound in his belly still seeped fresh blood, but the transformation to wolf had mitigated the shoulder.  His arm tingled oddly.  Remus reached for his wand.  ' _Accio_ ,' he rasped, pointing the trembling tip to the faint lightness on the horizon.  ' _Accio_ coat.  And pack.'

Even that much magic left him gasping.  He buried his head in his hands til the dizziness passed.  He'd no idea how far he'd gone, but he seemed out of the foothills.  The farthest he'd ever travelled as a wolf was ten miles or so, the range of the Forbidden Forest that could be navigated when accompanied by a stag, a rat, and a domesticated mutt who all had intentions of showing up for classes in the morning.  He reckoned now he'd gone quite a bit farther.  It took his things ages to reach him, and he worried they'd come up against some obstacle on the way, like a lorry on a motorway, a town wherein whizzing duffels might arouse suspicion.  Just when he'd given up and determined to cast the spell again, however, his pack thumped gently up against him, and his coat settled over his shoulders.  There was a great ghastly streak of red all over the front of his coat, matting the fur hood on the right.  He cringed at the smell, too sensitive still in the early hours after the transformation to ignore it.  He dug through his pack for socks and denims and found, buried in the secret inner pocket, a phial of Pepper Up.  It was down to one good mouthful, and he downed it.  He Apparated as soon as he felt a tentative flush of new strength, and arrived in a face-down sprawl in the street outside Summerlea House, startling an early morning cyclist who swerved to avoid him and crashed into a shrub.

'Sorry,' Remus gasped.  'Sorry, uh--'  Password.  He didn't know the current password.  Shit.  He wiped at helpless tears springing up to sting his eyes.  And he'd left the fucking owl--

'Get inside,' a voice hissed in his ear, and a hand he didn't see til it closed on his arm yanked him up a path that was invisible til he was invited onto it.  Summerlea House faded in as he tumbled up the steps, and Severus Snape was a stark black shadow standing over him as Remus fell in a dead faint in the foyer.

His inner clock recognised it as rather a long time later that he awoke, and at first it was to a hazy dream-state in which he thought he was being licked by Padfoot.  He gave a half-hearted moan and pushed Pads off him, but came in contact with a very human hand, which held him down, and a very human voice, which murmured something muffled.  A flannel, that was the soft wet rough thing wiping him down.  It brushed gently over his eyes, dripping warm water down his cheeks, and Remus blinked up into the dim light of a single candle.  And it only then occurred to him there was someone human with him.  He inhaled, staggered to his feet, and made it approximately two and a half steps before he was sat very firmly back down.

'The moon has set,' Snape told him.  'It's safe.'

'You're sure?' he asked, rather stupidly, but Snape only nodded.  'Oh,' he said.

'About half seven,' Snape supplied then, after a strained pause.  'Just getting light out.  It was a long moon this month, nearly eighteen hours. I don't think you moved at all during the night.  Your... wounds...'

'I didn't do that to myself.'

'I didn't think you had,' Snape murmured.  'I didn't think you could.  Fenrir Greyback?'

'I don't think he'd have failed at it.'  It was hazy.  Lynch, he remembered Lynch.  Telling him to run.  'It'll look as though I've gone on my own,' he rasped.  'A body would have needed an explanation.  Running away-- running away just means I'm a coward.  End of story.'

' _Enervate_.'  Cool light chased away the pain.  Better than the Pepper Up.  It cleared the fuzz from his brain, as well, and he rolled his head to look about him.  The laundry of Summerlea House.  His own little dungeon, dark and chill.  Remus shivered, but before he could ask for it, Snape flicked his wand again, and said, ' _Lumos,_ ' and chased away the nightmare shadows in the corners.

'The better to see you with,' Snape said, when Remus looked up.  Unaccountably Snape flushed, sallow cheeks turning rosy.  'It's a children's fable.  Little Red and the-- wolf.'

'We read it in Muggle Studies.'  Remus forgave him with a pained smile.  'They fill him up with stones, don't they.'

He got only a wordless reply, smoothing over the awkwardness.  Snape indicated the big laundry sink, which ran with steaming water.  Remus used the wall to leverage himself up.  His clothes had survived the second night of the moon, which meant he'd been poorly indeed.  His coat hung from a peg, dripping on the bare stone beneath it, and his denims were torn at the seams.  Snape turned his head away, beaky nose the only thing visible as he tapped his fingers on the sink's rim.  Remus was grateful for both the illusion of privacy and the fact that he stayed, though surely Snape was only worried he'd collapse.  He let the denims fall to his ankles and stepped out of them.  He couldn't remember what had become of his boots, but Snape quietly reminded him he'd summoned his pack, and assured him it was undisturbed, upstairs.  'I-- I need help,' Remus stammered then, and Snape efficiently unbuttoned Remus' shirt, looking only at his own hands.

'Ready?'

'Ready.'  Snape peeled the sticky shirt from his shoulder, as Remus ground his teeth. Flesh only held in place by a thin layer of cotton ripped anew, and with a gasp Remus flung a hand to the wall for support. When his vision cleared, he stared at the red print his palm had left on the plaster. He tried to brush it away, and only smeared it.

'Leave it,' Snape said quietly. The soapy flannel brushed very gently at the outer edges of the slash. 'You'll need stitches.'

'Why.'

'Take my word for it.'

'I meant-- why are you being kind.'

'I'm not a monster,' Snape murmured, affronted.

'I am,' Remus said, too weary to mince words.

The flannel smoothed along his shoulder. Snape wrung it beneath the faucet, and it ran red. 'No,' he answered quietly. 'I accepted some time ago you weren't a part of the... prank... if nothing else, if you'd ever thought it was a good idea, you'd have given up faking remorse years ago. The other three did.'

He took the cloth for himself and pressed roughly, breathing out hard.  'Suo Cludo,' he said.  'The spell for sewing up.  I haven't got enough magic in me to.  Anything.'

Snape tapped his wand to first the wound at his shoulder, then again at his belly.  'You should see a mediwizard.'

'What's one more scar?'

The wand dipped over the old mark at his hip.  It had never faded, and it never would.  Two inches north of his groin, a raw red span the width of a man's palm.  It was a tender touch, the finger that traced over the wand's path, a moment later.  Marking the outer boundaries and then, brave or foolhardy, touching the bite itself.

It was only the closeness of a body to his.  The intimacy of the touch, even if it only felt intimate to him.  Snape's dark hair smelled of sandalwood.  His hands were cool.  Would his mouth be? Remus thought, and closed his eyes, turned his head away.

'When I followed you to the Shack that night,' Snape whispered.  'I don't even remember now what I meant to do.  Catch you breaking the rules, I suppose.  You were the vulnerable one.  Pettigrew, maybe, but you... you were the one it would hurt.  The only one I could hurt.  And I wanted one of you to hurt.'

Remus swallowed.  'That's fair, I suppose.'

'Fair.'

'How much remorse do you need from me just now?'

Maybe he wasn't the only one confusing thoughts and feelings.  Snape's long fingers curled about his neck. They dragged in blood, and Remus could taste it on the pad of the thumb that swiped over his lower lip.

Power, Remus was thinking then, as Snape brought their mouths together.  Power.  He was unclothed, Snape fully dressed; he was wounded and bleeding, Snape whole.  He was ravaged and sore and weary, Snape at full strength.  He cared, and Snape didn't.  And maybe Snape was just playing the long game and playing it especially well, because it did hurt, a thin edge of ache and humiliation.  Tongue, and then teeth.  Breath against his cheek.  Snape rested against him for a long uncertain moment.  Then his lips trailed over Remus' jaw, his chin, and Remus tilted his head back, exposing his throat.  With a shaky sigh, Snape kissed the spot where Greyback had marked him, two months ago, and then he put his hand in Remus' hair and pulled him in and kissed him properly, passionately, and Remus stopped thinking about it and let it happen.

One hand roamed the hair over his pectorals, tracing the line over his stomach to his hips.  Snape pressed close to him, pressed him against the wall so there was cold at his back and warmth aligned snugly with his torso.  They bumped each other clumsily trying for the buttons-- the many buttons, why so many buttons-- of Snape's waistcoat, his shirt, his trousers.  At last there was bare skin to match his own and he took, though the hitch of Snape's heaving inhale was permission, encouragement.  He touched, palms flat to ribs, to a whirring heartbeat, to a smooth nipple that hardened at his plucking fingers.  Spine, long and arching.  Waist, trim and firm.  Buttocks--

He only then remembered Lynch.  His flinch was noticed.  Snape pulled back, clearly thinking it was physical, and Remus gave the lie his most apologetic smile, a shake of his head.

After a moment Snape made a noise that sounded odd and amused.  'Sirius Black?'

'What?  Sirius?'

'Don't be coy, Lupin.  If there's anyone who hasn't seen him handsing you in every public venue it's not for lack of trying.'

'People really--'  He scrubbed his hair out of his face.  'I've never.  He'd never.  He likes them blonde and buxom.'  Snape gave only a single sceptical snort, and Remus added shortly, 'He likes that I'd be in love him.  I'm queer, of course I'd fall for him.'

'Of course,' Snape echoed, but after a moment he resumed his caress of Remus' chest hair, tugging lightly and making Remus shiver.  'Are you?  In love with him?'

'Hardly.'  Snape stroked the whorl of his ear, leaning slowly nearer til his lips touched the lobe.  'Probably,' Remus admitted airlessly, and he tugged at all the fabric at Snape's middle and found the band of his shorts and slid his hand beneath it, and Snape moulded to him with a curse.  Everything went hushed and hollow and hot.  They explored, no longer tentative but neither rushing, and when Snape began to stroke him in earnest Remus stopped him only to lick his palm slick.  He did the same with his own hand, and then Snape was the only thing holding him, shoulder pressing him tight against the wall as they found a rhythm.  In tandem they squeezed and fondled, and if it didn't last quite long enough, the intensity of it wrung him out.  He came first, and bit his lip to bleeding.  Snape lapped the salty drop, smeared it, fed his tongue slowly into Remus' mouth, and shuddered against him, a groan so soft it was almost dream-like.  He reached sticky release with his lips crushed to Remus' neck, his hands clenched in Remus' hair, and after stood there leaning on him as if reluctant to give it up, and it was-- was--

Whatever the feeling was, it slipped away, too dim to be grasped and held.  Remus let his head fall back to the wall.  Snape faded back, bit by bit.  The moment of total separation came reluctantly, but came all the same, a whisper of wool, Snape's heel on the floor.  The faucet began to run again, and Snape washed his hands, rinsed his face.  Turned with the flannel, something too brisk for tenderness, but gentle all the same as he wiped Remus' groin.

'You should bathe,' Snape said then, low enough not to break the moment.  'The others will be here soon.'

That, though, broke it well and good.  'Others?'

'Albus has called a meeting.'

'Now?'

'An hour or so.'

He'd barely be upright in an hour.  In an hour he'd barely be up to questioning his judgement, and he'd have lots of questions on that task.  Like if Snape had planned to tell him all along, and only impetuously seduced him in the laundry.  What it meant, if not.

He didn't hie out of there at breakneck speed, he didn't wonder what he'd do for clothes, he didn't even think-- well, much-- about cleaning the evidence of a moon's confinement.  He just stood there staring at a man he'd had off in the laundry of Dumbledore's house and at last he said, 'I owe you a thanks.'

Snape actually laughed, though it was cutting.  'Oh, you are exactly how I thought you'd be,' he drawled.

Remus flushed.  'For helping me,' he clarified, starchy now.  'Today.  The last moon.  That was you, also?'  He didn't wait for the bare nod of acknowledgment.  'I don't suppose if I ask why I'll much like the answer.'

'Albus assigned me.'

No.  No, he did not much like that answer at all.  He held his breath, just til the flash of hurt went.  'Right,' he said.  'I'll, um.  Go.'

'Lupin.'  Snape stopped him only a step away; there was a phial in his hand, emerging from his pocket.  'This should... should help with the after-effects of the wolfsbane.'

He took it wordlessly.  As he turned to go, he noticed a flash of something on the floor, and glanced back.  A single strip of gold confetti, fallen by Snape's shoe.  As if it had been in a pocket, lost when jostled.

 

**

 

'Couldn't find a sitter so last-minute,' Arthur said.  'Hate to have so many underfoot, but couldn't think what to do with all of them--'

The elder Weasley children were in school and so escaped the fate of being trapped in an adults-only nightmare, but the youngsters were consigned to the dire tragedy of a house with no nursery, no toys, and too many opportunities for mischief.  Percy Weasley was a pouty-faced four year old, yanked this way and that by his mother's unyielding grip on his hand, though Remus noticed and decided not to tell that Percy had managed to get himself a good pocketful of Dumbledore's butterscotches from the table-top bowl.  The twins were tiny troublemakers, and had the entire crowd in a tizzy with a remarkable display of strategy for toddlers: one set up a wailing fuss with a calculated accident with the fire pokers, whilst the other got into the kitchen and emerged naked, covered head-to-toe in gloppy chocolate, and grinning ear to ear.  Dumbledore professed mild amazement; Molly Weasley looked ready to die of shame on the spot, and the whole house thundered with her impressive lecture.  Neither twin looked entirely repentant, at least til Molly marched them to the back garden to hose off.

Remus, who had vacated the bath only just before the first arrivals, dozed in a chair by an out-of-the-way window.  Snape's potion had relieved the mountain of little pains that always followed a transformation, but it had come on the tail of both a Pepper Up and an Enervation, and there was only so far he could go to recovery without the natural healing of a good sleep.  He woke a moment when someone shook out a quilt over his legs, but Sirius only whispered for him to rest a while longer, and he took that advice without thinking on it.  The next time he opened his eyes, it was to George Weasley climbing into his arms; he thought it was George, at any rate, the one who hadn't got himself drenched in chocolate, and he only curled the boy close, tucked a tiny ginger head beneath his chin, and settled back in.

Woke a third time when Arthur snapped a picture of their mutual nap.  His friend grinned at him.  'Couldn't resist,' Arthur whispered.  'No, no, he's quiet, he's yours.  Fred?'  Arthur carefully checked the sleeping boy's left foot.  'George.  Has a little scar on his heel there,' he told Remus.  'Pity they have to wear shoes, it's the only way to tell them apart most days.  We're about to start.'

Peter found him in the jostling as everyone came to get seats, and Remus shifted his feet off the ottoman to allow Peter to sit there.  George was sucking industriously on his thumb, eyes moving rapidly beneath soft translucent lids.  Remus shifted him to lay cross-wise on his lap and tucked the quilt about him, coincidentally freeing his hand for the tea Peter provided.  He dove nose-first into the cup, so eager he accidentally dipped his hair.  He shoved it behind his ears, but Peter only laughed.

'Rough night?' he whispered.

'Yeah,' Remus said.  'I, um.  Yeah.'

Peter's smile faded.  'Moony,' he said.  'We... we ought to talk.  All of us, or... maybe just you and I?  There's things to say.'

'I know.'  He did, truly, know it couldn't be left as he'd left it with them.  Peter squeezed his knee.  Whatever answer he might have made was averted, at any rate, by Dumbledore's arrival.

'Hello, friends, hello,' the Hogwarts Headmaster greeted them all.  'Biscuits, anyone?  Ah, Molly's brought pie-- terribly thoughtful.  Greetings, please sit as you can, can everyone hear?  Just give that pot a little jiggle.'

The Headmaster's eyes fell on Remus.  Sombre.  Remus looked away, and Dumbledore sighed.

'We begin with sorrowful news,' Dumbledore said.  'Some of you will have heard already.  For most, this will be a shock.'  He took his place by the hearth in the big wingback chair, which looked, to Remus' jaundiced eye, a bit throne-like for their surroundings.  Remus found that if he slouched just enough he mostly had a view of the back of Peter's head, and concentrated on the little boy in his arms.  George was a proper little furnace, and smelled like grass, soap, a bit like sweat, but his skin was soft as silk and he clenched a fist in Remus' shirt with all his little might, and that was a good deal more pleasant than anything about to be said here.

'We have lost four of our number,' Dumbledore announced quietly.

Four?  It had been three at Christmas.

'Edgar Bones was killed last night,' Alastor Moody told the suddenly silent room.  'And his wife and children.  As you know he's-- was the Head of Magical Law Enforcement.  And not particularly intimate with this Order, though he knew of us.  He was conducting the search for Caradoc Dearborn and Benjy--'

'Caradoc?'

'We may never find Caradoc,' Dumbledore answered Gideon.  'It is unknown at this time precisely--'  For once even Albus Dumbledore seemed at a loss for words.  He passed a hand over his eyes.  'Caradoc is missing, presumed dead,' he said then.  'We have recovered Benjamin Fenwick, in part.  His family will have some closure.  Dorcas Meadowes is... not recoverable.  We have strong reason to believe Edgar was attacked because one or perhaps all of these other victims were discovered to be linked to organised and covert resistance to the aims of our enemies.'

That, Remus thought, was a singularly well-worded avoidance of culpability.

'But his family?' Dedalus said weakly.

'Yes.'  Dumbledore sighed.  'Yes.'

'Someone slipped,' Alastor said, when it was clear no more would emerge.  'I'm not blamin' anyone, but we all know information is all too readily extracted under torture, and we have plenty of evidence now that You-Know-Who doesn't scruple about torture.  And if you don't scruple about torture, you've got no reason to scruple about targeting civilians.  He's following a trail and he's got a fair idea where it leads now.'

'Frank,' Dumbledore requested.  'Would you please tell me what you've told Alastor and myself.'

Frank Longbottom rose from his seat, uneasy at being the centre of attention, slipping his hand down for his wife to hold.  'We've been approached,' he said.

'Approached?' Peter asked sharply.  'You mean... by _them_?'

'I don't know what else to call it,' Frank said.  'It's a bribe, or at least I expect it's meant to be a bribe.  A man I didn't know stopped me outside the Ministry yesterday.  I thought there was something odd about him-- I couldn't quite look him in the face, and afterward I couldn't remember at all what he looked like.  But he told me I'd been noticed, me and Alice both.  And he said our kind could find greater reward elsewhere if we only sought it.  That's exactly what he said, I think.  Greater reward only if we sought it.  Dumbledore and I have gone over the memory and it's scrambled--'

'Confundus Charm,' Dumbledore murmured, glancing again at Remus.

Remus nodded.  He'd thought it was the Confundus Charm at work, the day he'd crossed Voldemort.  But obviously it had worked rather better on Frank, who had no such protection as Remus had.

'What did you do?' Kingsley asked.

'Nothing to put him off,' Frank said with a helpless shrug.  'I said I didn't think I knew what he meant, and I excused myself.  Couldn't say no, could I?'

What made him look at James just that moment, Remus wasn't sure.  But he was in time to catch the way James paled, that Lily stared at him in chagrin.

'I said no,' James said. 'I was--'  James swallowed hard enough for everyone to see it.  'Someone came to me, too.  Just this morning.  Outside the Ministry, just like you, Frank.  I didn't even think--'

'Shocking,' Snape muttered, but Lily turned a fierce stare on him, and he didn't interrupt again.

If anything, though, James had taken that as a body blow.  'You're right,' he said shakily.  'I always just-- say whatever's first on my mind.  I should have thought, like you, Frank.'

'Has anyone else been approached?' Dumbledore asked.  He waited for reply, but there was none.  He twined his wand in rotation, eyes abstracted.  'The first defiance,' he said.

Snape looked up sharpish at that.  'Surely you don't believe that.'

Dumbledore raised a hand.  'Later, Severus.'

'We have a mole,' Moody said.

That sparked chaos.  Everyone errupted, as if a switch had got flipped.  How could it be?  They'd only met a few times.  There were no lists, everyone was here by invitation only, only Dumbledore truly knew everyone, no, that wasn't true, everyone in the room had contact with someone who wasn't part of the Order, and things got said, they were all developing assets, someone might have put it together, or the 'parties' hadn't deceived anyone-- had Dumbledore performed a recent sweep of Summerlea House?  What about Hogwarts?  And on and on, til Moody stood up and thundered for everyone to be silent, which didn't work at all, and Remus didn't know til George squeaked that he was squeezing the boy.  He dropped a kiss to the boy's head and rocked him til he settled again.  Peter traded uneasy looks with him and picked at the hem of his jacket.  They were very nearly the only two not caught up in the row.  Snape was still as a statue, arms crossed at his chest, but that the left was upturned, the right hand protecting the forearm, and Snape's jaw was clenched hard enough to break his teeth.

Remus was not the clever one for nothing.  Clever people watched, and clever people watched well enough to predict based on what they saw.  He'd been a lifetime predicting when secrets came to a head, and he'd had some notable failures of preventing the mess resulting.  Someone would discover Snape's double role, and once that information was known-- exactly as Moody had said.  Information was readily extracted by torture.  If Lord Voldemort knew of the Order of the Phoenix, it would not be long before he knew Severus Snape was in it.

Clever people knew, too, when Snape looked at him with dark eyes that refused to plead and yet refused to look away, that sometimes the reasons for things only became clear when you had enough of the pieces.  Like knowing that when paranoia reached the right pitch, knowing when people were scared, even good people were capable of bad things.  Snape was not a good person, but he was a necessary one.  And he'd been in the laundry for hours giving Remus a half dozen reasons to protect him, choosing an ally who'd act now as he'd failed to act in the past.

His mouth was dry.  He was tired still, floating a little, and not in condition to make weighty decisions.  He wished there'd at least been food this time.

He stroked George's fine tufted hair, and took a breath so deep it twinged the wound in his gut.  He said, 'It's my fault.'

He wasn't loud enough at first to draw more than a handful of eyes.  Peter looked nearly sickly.  'What?' Arthur asked, nearby, and that drew more attention, and by the time Remus repeated himself everyone had turned to look at him.

'It's my fault,' Remus said.

Dumbledore put a knuckle to his lips, as if to stop himself speaking.  Remus doubted it.  He'd seen Dumbledore play chess.  The old man knew when to sacrifice a pawn.

'Moony?' Sirius asked.

Yes.  Might as well start with that.  'I've been with the werewolves,' Remus said, forcing himself not to stutter on that word, for all he couldn't quite look up.  George, just look at little George.  Freckles already, a smattering on his soft cheeks.  'I've been with them since November, trying to keep them out of this war.  He Who Must Not Be Named came to us.  He's got a dozen followers, an Order of his own, I think.  They saw my face.  Someone must have recognised me.  Traced me back to here.'

'With the werewolves?' Kingsley repeated, sitting up at that.  'You mean that Fenrir Greyback?  The one behind all the bites?'

'Yes.  They're promising the werewolves all sorts of things to.  To.'  He hardly knew.  'There's a potion to keep werewolves from losing... their... identity during the full moon.  It would mean everything.  They could control the werewolves, but the werewolves could control themselves.  It would mean equality.  It's a hell of an offer.'

There was a murmur at that.  Kingsley overrode it.  'But I don't understand, Remus.  I mean-- I understand what you're saying-- but why you?  We've got a task force in the Aurors, we've been trying to locate Greyback for months, and you're--'

Judging by the way Kingsley choked himself off at that, he'd figured it out mid-sentence.  Remus was not an Auror.  There was only one other reason he'd be with the werewolves.

Someone took George.  Not quite a yank.  Remus didn't watch to see who it was.  There was a little cry, and then Molly had him, and Remus buried his hands in the quilt, just reminding himself to breathe.  In, out.  In.  Out.

Peter covered his hand.  A moment later, shoving Fabian aside to get across the room in haste, Sirius took a belligerent stance between his chair and the rest of the Order.  Lily joined him.  James was last, but only by an inch, and James took up a glare unwittingly matching Snape's, arms folded, head locked high.

'So what?' James demanded of the room.  'So what if he is.'

Dumbledore folded his hands across his lap.  He said, 'Remus has my absolute confidence.  It was unavoidable circumstance, and I placed him in that danger.  I am the one who asked Remus to integrate himself with Greyback's followers.  I did not expect him to so quickly encounter our enemy, nor indeed face to face.  Nor did there seem to be anything to be done about it after the fact of its happening, so indeed I did not do anything.'

That sank heavily.  No-one spoke for a strange and dragging minute, though their side of the room seemed to clear without anyone actually moving.

It was Alice Longbottom who broke the silence.  'Well... what do we do?' she asked.  'Professor?  What do we do now?'

'Now,' Dumbledore said, 'we re-assess.'

 

 

**

 

 

'So that's where you were all this time.'  Sirius brushed at Remus' hair, longish at the back of his neck, and touched the scar left by Greyback's fangs from his first moon in the camp.  'Moony,' he said.

Remus moved his head away.  He was too raw for Sirius' games, even if they were unconsciously done and well-intentioned.  Too much had happened too quickly, and his mind was in a slow churning funk, as if he were half asleep and couldn't wake. 

Peter brought him a fresh cup of tea, and he only held it, dully grateful for the warmth on his cold hands.  Lily took it from him a moment later, added three heaping spoonfuls of sugar, and went so far as to guide it to his lips.  He grimaced at the sweet taste, but let her mother him.

'They're hateful,' James was muttering.  He paced the kitchen, stumping along the way he did when he was in a mood, a wearying racket.

'They're not hateful,' Remus murmured.  He took one more sip of the tea and set it aside.  'Everyone reacts that way.  That's the way you're supposed to react when you find out there's a werewolf sitting amongst you.'

'We didn't,' Sirius pointed out.

'You're crazy,' Remus replied.

Sirius grinned a little.  'Yeah,' he said.  Then he sobered.  'But not about this.  I'm sorry.  It's not right.'

Despite himself, it helped to hear that.  He swallowed.  'It's all right.'

'Change the subject,' Lily said bluntly.  'Tell me again about the Confundus Charm, Remus.'

She'd taken notes through his first recitation, during the meeting.  She'd had separate interviews with the Longbottoms as well as her own husband, and like she's always done in class she was drawing up a grid on her parchment, charting the abnormalities.  'Most people don't recognise the charm when it's cast,' she'd said.  'It's only afterward they realise they were missing pieces.  But you knew immediately?'

'I guessed it was the Confundus,' Remus said now.  'It's possible it was something else.'  Snape might be able to confirm either way, but he'd disappeared after the meeting, and Remus had no intention of chasing him down.  There had been no thanks for what Remus had done to spare him even the possibility of attention, and Remus didn't expect there would be.  That he'd been so easily manipulated was his own fault, really, and he was beyond caring now it was over.  His head hurt and he just wanted to sleep.

'But what were the effects exactly?'

'Couldn't count how many of them were there, couldn't get a lock on their features, even the features of their masks.  The only one I could see perfectly was He Who Must Not Be Named, and even then I think he was relying on the Charm to persuade Greyback to obey him without question.  He talked to Greyback like he was a child, and I don't think it was part of the show.  He let his men say all sorts of nasty things about us and then he'd step in like-- like the teacher in a class with naughty schoolchildren.  The voice of reason trying to calm everything down again.  But he never actually promised anything or even gave good reasons for Greyback to do it.  When Greyback demanded more I think he was genuinely irate.'

'Dumbledore should have told us,' Peter said.

'It wasn't the wrong decision.'  Remus played with the little gold stirring spoon, clinking it against the saucer.  'The more we know about what each of us is doing, the more there is to tell if anyone of us are caught.'

'I disagree.'  Lily chewed at a lock of her hair escaped from her plait.  She chewed at the tip of the borrowed quill, too, til Remus reached and nudged it away from her mouth.  She frowned.  'There's always a risk of intelligence leaking,' she said.  'But there's also more to gain if we can pool what we know.  Like figuring out this charm.  We can protect against it, you know, if we know what we're up against.'

'Moony.'  Sirius lounged on his elbows against the kitchen island, his hands clasped, his eyes low.  'You're not going back,' he questioned, or at least it seemed a question, his voice ticking up at the end of it.

'It would be suspicious if I didn't.'  James whirled on him and Sirius pinched his mouth tight, but Remus waved them off.  'Think,' he said harshly.  'They know where I am.  They'll be watching to see what I do.  I need to stay in situ, or they'll know we know they know.'  He pressed at the shooting pain behind his eyes.  'It's stupid,' he said.  'But it's true.  Besides.  Just because You-Know-Who knows who I am doesn't mean I can't be effective with Greyback.'

'From here that looks an awful lot like a death sentence,' Sirius said quite flatly.  'Remus, have you even looked in a mirror?  You're starved and you're in pain and you're literally bleeding right this moment.'

'Shit.'  He checked his shirtfront.  Yes.  A sickle-sized dot on his stomach from the belly wound, seeping through the bandage he'd placed in the bath.  The shoulder was damp, too.  'Shit,' he said, shoving off his stool and grabbing a tea towel from the drawer.  He didn't have another shirt to ruin.  He scrubbed at the stain.

' _Scourgify_ ,' Lily said, from behind him, and the red vanished, leaving only a spot of wet behind.  Remus closed his eyes.  'You never did things the Muggle way before,' Lily said.

'I'm learning, aren't I.'  He folded the towel and left it sitting.  'I'm going back,' he said.  'It's going to look damned odd if I don't.'  Lynch would have to be dealt with.  He believed that threat, that Lynch would try to kill him if he returned.  He'd never killed a man and didn't want to, but he knew that he would, if it came to it.  He touched the faint discolouration his blood had left on the towel.  Yes, he could do it.  Whatever that made him.  'And I can deal with the other things,' he said softly.

'Like getting mauled by a bunch of feral wolves?'

'They're not feral, Sirius!  They're not even bad men.  They're just scared and there's no way for them to say no, is there?'

'If that's true, Remus, there's no good going back,' James said reasonably.  'They'll join His army no matter what happens to you in the meanwhile.'

He dug his thumbs into his eyes.  'I know it sounds like I'm contradicting myself,' he tried again.  'But I believe I can stop Greyback.  I wouldn't like anyone to give up on me.  How could I give up on him?'

They exchanged uncomfortable looks, as if he weren't standing right in front of them watching them do it.  Remus stopped himself by putting his fist to his teeth and just pressing it there.  They'd helped him, stood up for him.  Loved him even when he made utterly no sense.

'I need to have a lie-down,' he managed finally.  'I'm sorry.  I just-- I can't discuss this just now.'

'I'll stay,' Sirius said.  'I've tomorrow off anyway.  It's not the same as being there for you during the moon, but at least I can cook you a good English breakfast, can't I?'

His first instinct was to say no, even as the offer warmed him.  He forced himself to smile.  'Thanks,' he said.  'That's kind.'  He exhaled.  'I'm sorry, everyone.  It's not that I didn't want to tell you.'

Lily embraced him.  'We only want you to be all right.'

He hugged her tightly.  'I only want that for you, too.  So I'll play my part as well, yeah?  Let me help keep you all safe.'

James was next, and his strength was a balm to a very shaky day.  'You're worth ten of everyone in this Order,' James told him firmly.  'And they'll accept you once they've got their heads out of their asses.  If I have to beat it into every single one of them.'

'Aye, Captain.'

Peter seemed troubled, still, and Remus only then thought of how quiet he'd been of late, but when he took his turn his embrace was the fiercest of all.  He said nothing else, though he looked back to wave as he followed James and Lily out, his pointed face mournful til he schooled it calm.

Remus did some schooling of his own, facing off Sirius.  'Alone at last,' Sirius joked, propping himself up against one of the avocado cabinets.  'Dumbledore really lets you stay here during the moon?'

'He said it was an option,' Remus answered truthfully.  'In practise, it's... complicated.'

'It's always been complicated.'

'Yes, Pads, it has.'

Sirius smiled at his nickname.  It left only a small impression on his face, fading into rueful lines.  'I keep trying to tell you I'm worried about you,' he said then.  'Don't shrug me off.  You don't see you the way I see you.'

'And what exactly do you see, Padfoot.'

'You've always been a bad day away from giving up.'

That struck a little too close to home.  It was here in this house, after all, Dumbledore had accused him of despair, and for a moment it was despair indeed that threatened.  'No,' Remus said hoarsely.  He cleared his throat with a cough.  'I'm stronger than that.'

Sirius searched his face.  'Prove me wrong then.'  He put out a hand.  'Come on,' he said.  'Let's get you laid up.  Full night's rest, and I'll bring you a glass of warm milk.'

Despite himself, he let Sirius take him under an arm and let Sirius hold him close.  Sandalwood scent, he thought, as Sirius' thick dark hair brushed his cheek.  He sighed, and went to bed.


	7. We Have Been Freed From One Kind Of Slavery Only To Be Delivered Into Another.  Is This Freedom?  Are We Yet Free Men?

It was some hours yet before dawn. The fire was well banked, embers glowing dull orange. Remus let his pack slide to the ground, landing on the rumpled blankets in what had always been his spot. Sleeping arrangements had changed, he noticed: Tabrett had moved closer, and Finn and Gereint had traded with Jules and Erik, coming nearer to his station. Surrounding his empty pallet.

Remus took his time choosing a knife from the cooking set. The little paring knife was sharpest, getting the most use, and he considered the big butcher's cleaver, which was dull-edged but dramatic. In the end he selected not a knife at all but the long granny fork, wood-handled and solid, with two wickedly pointed tines each as long as his fingers. He practised his grip, overhand, jabbing at the dirt a few times to be sure how much force was required. It would serve well. Content, he used the empty bucket to scoop up the hot ashes from the firepit, and he carried it across the camp. He stood looking down at Lynch wrapped up tight and snoring in his sleeping bag, planted himself astride the man's long legs, and woke him by unceremoniously dumping the burning cinders onto his head.

Lynch woke up yelling and flailing, and Remus coolly kicked him flat. 'Get off me!' Lynch howled, which seemed a perfect sort of symmetry, all things considered, and Remus obliged momentarily by stepping off and around him as Lynch rolled, tangled in his zipped bag. He knelt behind the man, grabbed one waving hand and forced it to the dirt. He stabbed down with the fork, and pinned Lynch's palm with a spurt of blood and a scream.

Everyone was up by now. They scrambled to react, but stopped short when they saw what he was doing. No-one stopped him. Remus didn't spare a glance to see them hold each other back. It wasn't about them. The only one who mattered was Greyback, who stood himself at Lynch's kicking feet, and stared him down.

'I won't be pushed out of my place,' Remus said. 'Not by him.'

Greyback considered him without expression, ignoring the man between them who sobbed as he grappled the fork spearing his hand. 'Are you going to kill him?' Greyback asked finally, oddly indifferent to the answer, curious only.

Remus hesitated.  'Not if I don't have to.'

'He'll come after you, if you don't,' Greyback reasoned.

Remus wet his lips.  'That's his folly then, int'it.'

Greyback's eyes flicked down him, back up to his face. 'Then be done with it and let us all get back to sleep.'

Remus crouched and took Lynch by the sleeve. 'Hold still,' he instructed, and yanked the fork out. Lynch whimpered. 'You touch me with that again,' Remus told him, 'you touch anyone like that ever again, I'll cut it off.' He tossed the fork to the dirt. 'And then I'll come back for the rest.'

It was bravado more than anything.  He was shaking as he returned to his pallet, kicked off his boots, and slid beneath his cold blankets.  He hauled his pack near to use as a pillow and closed his eyes, but inside he was quaking, his heartbeat pounding as if he were a hollow drum, even the rush of his blood in his ears deafening.  Though he pretended to be instantly asleep he was excruciatingly aware of every tiny sound as the other men went back to their rest.  Lynch was snuffling and cursing, and he ordered Tabrett to bring him something for a bandage, but rather surprisingly the usually affable Tabrett told him to fetch his own.  A footstep too near Remus' pallet made him tense, but when he dared to peek a moment later, all he found was a canteen.  His canteen.  He'd noticed it lost, when he'd gone through his pack earlier.  He snaked out an arm and grabbed the strap, dragging it under the blanket with him.  He felt a pat on his shoulder, and then they let him be.

Well.  How was that for a homecoming.

 

 

**

 

 

'Left arm up.  Up, RJ!  No, not like that, you're as like to punch your own chin.'  Jules yanked him into place-- again-- then bent and adjusted his stance by dragging his feet through the dirt as Remus wobbled and tried to find his balance.  'I thought you said that school of yours taught you to fight.'

'With wands,' Remus reminded him.  'It's a bit different.'

'Wands,' Erik repeated, shaking his head.

'Well, wands aren't growing out the ends of your arms, are they?'  Jules tapped his clenched fists.  'These are.  All right.  Hit me again.'

Remus did give it actual effort.  Jules blocked him, of course.  And again, and again after that, and then took a swing of his own, which Remus utterly missed coming at him, and he doubled over, all the air knocked out of him, with a new sore point of pain blooming in his chest.  'I don't think this is working,' Remus wheezed, bracing himself on his knees.

'For a lad who looked like Death come to visit last night, you're a sorry show this morning,' Erik observed.

'Ta,' Remus coughed.

'Lessons' had started, evidently by group consent, about an hour after breakfast.  Lynch had been gone before Remus awoke, and by the time Remus had gone off to the river to wash their dishes sides had been taken and lines drawn.  Those siding with Lynch were, in main, younger and newer to the camp.  Those who boldly sided with Remus were limited mostly to Jules and Erik, who seemed to feel they were stepping bodily between him and certain doom.  Even Tabrett had shaken his head and left them to their strange devices.  But there was a great deal of practicality in their intentions, and Remus could hardly deny he needed any advantage he could get.

'Lynch has at least four stone on you,' Jules was saying critically.  'And you're tall enough, but he's bigger.  If you could keep that wand of yours between you, I'd say all for it, but--'

'But it's nothing to count on.'  Remus forced himself upright, wiping sweat from his forehead on his sleeve.  'No, you're right.  Again.'  He raised his arms, trying to fall into the boxing stance that Jules made look so natural.  Right fist level with his chin, left hanging awkwardly out.  It didn't feel correct, and Erik sighed.  'Sorry,' Remus said.

'No.  Here.'  Erik supplied him a kerchief, and Remus looked dumbly at it before realising what it was meant for.  He was bleeding again.  He fumbled the buttons of his shirt, reaching to test the bandage at his shoulder.  It was just a sluggish flow, a torn stitch.  He pressed Erik's kerchief to it.

'It was the blood,' said a new gruff voice, and Remus looked up to find Greyback had joined them.

No-one had yet asked questions.  Even Jules and Erik had only collected him after breakfast and marched him off to the privacy of the woods, where they'd pinned him on the issue of his deplorable lack of ready defences.  Now, pinned as well by Greyback's unreadable whiskey-coloured eyes, Remus found himself biting the inside of his cheeks like a schoolboy anticipating detention.  He'd pushed, last night.  He'd thought with permission-- no, that had been true.  Greyback had let him do what he did, and this was not reprisal.  But it was part of their strange ongoing not-conversation, winding ever closer to an endpoint neither could properly see.

'The blood?'

'He thought he was clever,' Greyback continued.  He scuffed the snow with his toe, propped a big arm head-height on the peeling trunk of a nearby tree.  'Reckoned without the scent.  Human blood.  Your blood.  Reckoned without the wolfsbane-- being able to reason it out.'  He spat, casually.  'Born yesterday.  He forgets too easily.  Not like us.'

That was the kind of compliment Remus could very much have lived without.  The kind of compliment that led to perfectly reasonable people who'd known you for decades snatching their children out of your arms in perfectly unreasonable fear you'd suddenly go wolf.

'Make a fist.'  Greyback abruptly joined them, big hand encompassing Remus' and forming his fingers closed.  'No, watch me.  Like this.  Thumb there.  You hit with these two knuckles, see?  Keep the wrist straight and level.  You're too scrawny to win fights, so you take one hit and make it count.  Break the nose, first punch.  That's all you'll get.'

'Or go for the bollocks,' Jules added.

Greyback nodded at that.  'That's good advice.  Take him in the nuts and run for it.'

'I did all right last night,' Remus said brusquely, irritated that they thought so little of his capability.  'I could hex him.  If I've got my wand.'

'You had surprise last night,' Greyback pointed out.  'You won't get that lucky again-- don't even consider it.  In a real fight you'd not be standing around deciding which spell you want to use.  You have a chance to run, you take it.  The longer you stay the more chance they'll recover, or call for help.  That's how you die, makin' a stand for it.'

He'd run from Lynch.  That thought had carried shame.  He'd run, and it hadn't done him any good.  But-- maybe if he'd run when he'd first thought it might go bad.  If he'd run all the way back to camp, to get help of his own.  And, last night, surprise or no, it had been hours before the quakes had left his fingers.  He rubbed the persistent ache in his belly, the hole left by Lynch's knife.  'I panicked,' he made himself say, and said it flat and honest.  'The-- first time.  How do I-- how do I not panic?'

'Breathe,' Jules instructed.  'Deep breaths, lots of oxygen.  You can't lose your head if you're thinking about breathing.'

'You can't run if you're thinking about breathing,' Greyback corrected.  'Look at me.'  He lifted Remus' head by the chin.  'You won't panic.  You know why you won't panic?  Because you're not going to be braving it out again.  There's no points for dying bravely.  You're just dead.'

'Some things are worth dying for.'

'No,' Greyback said.  'This is all we get.  You take it with both hands and you defend it with both fists.  You understand me?'  He shook Remus a bit, hand clamped on his shoulder, over the wound Lynch had inflicted on him, and though it hurt Remus was hardly aware of it, Greyback stared him down so intensely.  'You hear me, RJ?'

He nodded once.  'I hear you.'

'Practise,' Greyback said.

So Remus spent hours punching things until his arms felt ready to fall off.  The trees didn't fight back, at least; his chest was a throbbing pelt of incipient bruises by the time Jules was done with him, but he finally learnt to block, at least.  That triumph was quite literally kicked out of him as Erik taught him to fall properly, and it only took one pointed demonstration to ensure him of the effectiveness of a boot to delicate parts.  He spent an age curled in foetal position, learning how to shield his neck, his head, his groin, and how to take a hit to anything vulnerable left exposed and still roll into flight as soon as could be done.  He was exhausted and sore by luncheon, but at the least relatively sure he'd have the right instincts in play if-- when-- Lynch retaliated.

But Lynch didn't.  Not that afternoon, at least, when he came slouching back to camp.  In fact, he acted as though nothing had happened at all, though his hand was wrapped and useless.  He didn't speak to Remus, or to Erik and Jules who made a show of hovering near him.  He didn't speak to hardly anyone, except in grunts or minimal words, but there was no aggression, no sullen glares.  He just took up his seat, spent a few hours whittling, and then napped through the early evening.  Just before dusk, he and Greyback spoke in low murmurs for a while, and then went off together.  They didn't come back by the time Tabrett was ladling stew into bowls for the remaining men, and Remus noticed he didn't keep anything aside for them, which meant they'd be gone the night, likely.  Where to, he could only guess, but all the guesses were grim.

 

 

**

 

 

The moon was a sliver of orange fading into dawn when Greyback shook him awake.  Remus scrubbed at sandy eyes, staring up.  Greyback's hand laid flat over his heart.  It was warm.  Greyback said, 'Come on, RJ.  With me.'

Lynch was waiting by the fire, warming his hands.  Remus dressed and hurried through a breakfast of dried fruit and the last of the marmite jar, crouching with his shoulder to the older man and eyes watching his boots for sudden movement.  Greyback skipped food entirely and drank his breakfast, finishing off the whiskey and swigging from the rum as well.  He wiped his broad hand across his mouth and squinted off at the horizon, as if judging the distance to the sunrise.

'Got your wand?' Greyback asked him.

Remus touched it in his belt.  'Always.'

They walked, the three of them.  Toward the village, though Remus hadn't been since the time Lynch had taken him there.  It was largely silent; Lynch was scowling and apparently deep in thought, and Greyback walked as if walking took all his concentration.  Remus said nothing at all, wondering.

Remus had supposed their task was the retrieval of the monthly wolfsbane, so he was unsurprised when Lynch split off from them in town, headed toward the pub.  What was unexpected was that he and Greyback had a different destination, or so it seemed when Greyback kept to the right and didn't give Remus any further direction.  So he followed, a few steps behind, and they walked til they came to the small square in the centre of the little village.  It lacked even the personality of Barwick-in-Elmet's may pole, which had its own traffic circle and some sign of life.  Remus didn't even know the name of this place, if it was indeed large enough to have a name.  The sole wood bench that occupied the square creaked at Greyback's weight, so Remus didn't tempt it, and took up a stand against the brick half-wall which bore a faded plaque celebrating some alderman of centuries past.

Chimneys began to smoke as villagers rose for the morning and attended their cold homes.  It was a painfully bright day already, the kind of day that would melt the remaining snow and make false promises for an early spring.  New Year had come and gone, and they were in for a bitter February.  Remus discovered a hole in his pocket, trying to warm his hands flat against his thighs.  Greyback never seemed to feel the cold, or, if he did, relished it.  He didn't even wear a scarf, his shirt open at the throat.  His breath steamed, as if he burned from the inside.  His head turned to watch a cat cross the square at a strut, disappearing beneath a bush.

As their wait neared the hour mark, Remus sat at Greyback's feet.  'What are we doing here?' he asked bluntly, figuring he might surprise the man into a candid answer.

No dice.  Greyback shook his head, not to say he didn't know, but to tell Remus not to pursue it.

So he switched tactics.  'Lynch.  He said he warned you about me.'

Greyback snorted.  'The day I need to be told to watch my tail I'll--'

'Die, probably,' Remus interrupted.

'If he wants to lead, he'll have to fight for it.'

'Alpha dog?'

Greyback only huffed a breath.  'I'm just a mean old bastard, RJ,' he said.  'I don't give up anything wot's mine.'

He smiled at that.  'No.  Don't imagine you do.'

Somewhere near, a bird cawed.  It didn't sound like Winfred, though Remus thought he'd seen Dumbledore's owl hanging about the last few days.  He'd been adopted, obviously.  He'd never had the money for an owl of his own, nor any familiar, though he'd been rather fond of Sirius' warty old toad Mr Ribbix.  Mr Ribbix had gone a bad way in sixth form and Remus had buried him in a biscuit tin by the standing stones at Hogwarts, since Sirius couldn't be bothered.  Lily had come.  She'd been the only Marauder-adjacent member of his former friends he'd been on speaking terms by then, and he'd cried over the silly toad in a confusion of rage and hurt and been thoroughly embarrassed by it.  Nearly all of sixth year had been like that, a morass of overmuch feeling spilling into everything he tried to do alone.  He'd loved his friends and been betrayed by them.  Missed them so much he'd forgone the apology he felt he deserved, just to belong again.  He'd been weak then, and looked back with weary contempt for his sixteen year old self.  It had taken that long year to figure out who he was meant to be, who he wanted to be, outside the shadow of stronger companions.  He'd never fail that badly again.

Then again, Severus Snape was probably about quits with him.  He'd finally got what he'd always wanted; Remus was exposed to nearly everyone he knew, now.  But it was that scene in the laundry had played over and over in his mind.  Admired, a bit, Snape's strength of determination.  Had thrown himself into the act with real courage, considering how it must have repulsed him to touch Remus, filthy with so much evidence of his werewolf nature.  He remembered the taste of blood between them.  How Snape had shuddered, touching him, how he'd taken it for rapture, not revulsion.

Remus drew a squiggle in the soft wet dirt.  'I've been thinking,' he said.

'You?'

His smile this time was rote.  'Me.  Lynch.  He said he'd warned you about me.'

'And?'

'Why didn't you listen?'

'What says I didn't?'

'I'm still here,' Remus said.

'Maybe I haven't made up my mind yet.'

'But why haven't you?'  Remus dangled his hands between his knees, staring off after the faint roar of a car starting in some lot nearby.  'Lynch thinks I've seduced you.'

Greyback spat again.

'But the thing is,' Remus went on, 'I can see why he'd think it, but the thing is, you've never really looked at me like that.  And I wonder why.  Because I remember.'

'Remember what.'

'What you did the night you bit me.'

It wasn't silent.  There was wind winding between the houses, branches of bent old oaks swaying.  The trees were never silent, laughing just a bit in the wind, branches swaying.  Insects buzzed, birds chirped.  He'd lived his entire life in a world of magical buildings that were very nearly sentient and occasionally hostile to their residents, but he'd never known how truly alive even a Muggle world could be when people weren't in it.

It wasn't silent, then, but Greyback was, as if he'd just stopped entirely.  Stopped breathing, stopped pumping blood, stopped blinking.

'Does it have to be children?'

'RJ.'  It was dry as dust, that voice.  And dangerous.

'And I was thinking,' Remus said.  'I've been thinking it, I can't get it out of my head, because Lynch has me thinking about it; I've been wondering, how much of you is evil because you've done evil things, and how much of you is evil because someone did evil to you first?'

He didn't get an answer to that.  But out of all that sleepy morning silence came a scream.

Remus scrambled to his feet.  Greyback rose slowly, muscles bunching and releasing.  He shed his coat, dropping it to the bench in a heap of wool.  Remus drew his wand, but Greyback stopped him with a hand on his arm, just above his wrist, and held him in place.

It was a woman.  She screamed again.  There was a shout, glass breaking.  An explosion.  And then came the fire.

As if that had loosed the beasts of hell, suddenly it was everywhere.  All the windows of the ivy-covered townhouse row burst outward at once.  The roof of The Rose Pub caved in.  The car he'd heard a minute ago came careening round the bend, and then suddenly it flipped upright on its front wheels, hurtled left, and struck the off-license, crashing through the front door and taking the entire wall with it.  The little church with its waving white lace curtains shuddered all over, like a ripple on water, and then with a great ghastly moan, its leaf-strewn graveyard spat out its dead.  Bodies lurched up from tombs rent open, some of them decomposing corpses, some little more than skeletons, but each fell into a teetering run, streaking off through the town's streets with preternatural wails.

Remus was aghast.  Dazed, he remembered to breathe, remembered-- 'Help,' he said.  'We should-- help--'

'Stay, RJ.'

'They need--'

'I told you to stay.'

The first Muggle he'd seen came staggering through the street.  She wore only a nightdress, the cotton shift tangling about her calves as she stumbled this way and that, reeling away from each fresh disaster.  She saw him, he and Greyback, and screamed.  Remus strained toward her, bound by Greyback's arm, but he would never have reached her in time.  One of the churchyard revenants got to her first, and grabbed her by the hair as she shrieked.  It bore her down on the pavement, though her fists pounded on its rotting back.  It ripped her open by the belly, spilling her entrails everywhere with greedy hands.

Remus vomitted a rush of acid.  Greyback held him up for that, too, supporting him with an arm about his middle, even when his knees went out and he would have fallen.

'Watch,' Greyback told him, but Remus hardly heard.  He couldn't look away.

More Muggles emerged.  Driven out of their homes.  Some ran, some crazed.  Parents dragged their sobbing children.  And the ones who herded them like sheep with cracking whips of curses were wizards in dark robes and skull-like masks.  The one who hurled the old Anglican priest out of the church chased him with a shout of ' _Crucio!_ ' so vicious it took three other Muggles a dozen yards away, and all pitched to the ground with horrid squeals.

One of the dark wizards turned from tormenting a white-haired old woman and flung his wand out stiffly at the morning sky.  ' _Morsmordre!_ ' he thundered, and black eldritch shot from his wand to spread through the sky like a curtain of fire.  The roiling cloud went sickly green at the edges, like a gangrenous disfigurement rending the air itself.  Out of the cloud came a skull, and out of the skull's leering jaws came a snake's head, curling with sickly grace.

In all, it had taken no more than ten minutes.

Greyback let him fall.  Remus landed on hands and knees, and skittered through dirt and grit as he ran.  He saw immediately the woman who'd been attacked by the undead corpse had died, her eyes staring, and neither could he do anything for the Muggles in the car, afire now inside the off-license and burning so hot he could not even go near.  'Stop!' he yelled, hurtling toward the dark wizards, but when one turned, wand upraised, at his interruption, they only laughed and grabbed him in.

'He's eager, Greyback!' someone hollered, and they were all laughing, all of the dark wizards, clapping him on the back and crowding him in.  He tripped over someone's legs, and tumbled atop a man whose shirt was slick with blood.  'Bite him!' one of the dark wizards jeered, and another took up the call, and a hand on the back of his head shoved him down to the man's throat, already ripped wide.  Remus fought, crazed, but they just laughed, laughed as if it were a panto and he the star actor.  When they saw the blood smearing his face they tittered and guffawed and applauded him.

Greyback yanked him up by the hood of his coat.  Remus gagged on frozen lungs.  His hands were shaking as he tried to wipe the blood off his cheek.  It was a thick streak on his sleeve, wet as water.

'Enough!'  One of the dark wizards with a searing voice.  His command silenced his fellows, even silenced the weeping Muggles who huddled together in the street.  'Bring them,' he snapped over his shoulder.  'Let's be done with this sordid business before the Ministry sends their irritating little Aurors after us.'

Lynch hadn't been at the market or the pub.  He had a boy, a boy no more than ten or eleven, dark doe eyes huge in a brown-skinned face.  Too terrified even to cry, too dazed.  Lynch forced him along, gave him such a fierce jostle that he rebounded off one of the dark wizards, who slapped him away with a disgusted curse.

Greyback addressed the wizard who'd spoken.  He said, 'You know it doesn't work without the moon.'

'The Dark Lord believes this message will suffice to make clear his intentions,' the masked man replied, his deep voice toneless now.  'Feel free to mark him well, however.  Share him around, perhaps.  Your young wolfman may enjoy an opportunity to demonstrate his artistry.'

The skull overhead spit its snake head again.  The snake's forked tongue flicked like lightning.

'Do it,' Greyback told him brusquely.

Remus stared.  'Do what.'

'Bite him.'

No.  He nearly said it.  He nearly said it with a curse, magic pulsing down his wand, needing to aim, maim, kill.  But he would be dead before the curse left his lips, surrounded by this many dark wizards.

He understood, then.  The fighting lessons hadn't been about Lynch.  They'd been preparing him for this.  Greyback had been preparing him for this.  We haven't a choice, he'd said, before Remus had known at all what that meant.

'See to it,' the dark wizard said, evidently tiring of them.  To the disappointed mutters of his fellows he put his wand up, and the sternness of his stance was enough to buy their silence.  'I will report our success to the Dark Lord,' he told them.  'The rest of you, disperse until you are called again.  You have served Him well today.'

The noise of their Disapparations was hardly audible.  There was too much other horror to cover it.  One by one they vanished, the leader last, with a burning glare at Greyback.

'Finish it,' he instructed, and then he too was gone.

Remus pressed trembling hands to his face.  It was no nightmare, it was, if anything, the most inescapably real moment he'd ever lived.  A girl whimpered.  A man who might have been her father moaned in pain.  Too many looked dead already.

And the boy.  The boy was just sat there, staring up at him in a stupor.  His pyjamas had little golden snitches on the legs.  He was wizarding.

'Don't,' Remus croaked.

'It's going to happen, RJ.'  Greyback moved.  Remus moved, moved faster, put himself between Greyback and the boy.  Greyback's face was brutally blank of all emotion, wiped still beneath the fine dusting of ash from the burning homes.

'Don't,' he said desperately.  'Don't.  Don't.'

'Get out of my way.'

'He's just a boy.'

Greyback hit him.  His fist took Remus in the jaw and knocked him aback with ringing ears.  Somehow he kept his feet, and though he lost ground in the stumble he kept himself between Greyback and the child.  'Don't.'

'Move!' Lynch shouted suddenly.  'Fuck it all, RJ, we need to be done before the Aurors get here--'

'Don't,' he said.  'I won't let you.'

'Get out of my way,' Greyback said again, inexorable as a mountain.

'Don't.'  He remembered his wand, still clutched in his hand.  Even as he thought it, Greyback saw him twitch, and hit him again.  This time the blow took him in the gut, in the spot Greyback knew him most vulnerable, the healing wound Lynch had inflicted with his knife only a week ago.  Remus doubled over, and Greyback pushed him aside.  Remus clung like a leech, did the only thing he could do, and shoved a leg between Greyback's and brought them both crashing down.  The slam of Greyback's weight on him drove the breath right out of him, but he wrapped both arms about Greyback's thick neck, held on as tenacious as if his own life depended on it.  He wasn't strong enough, could never be strong enough, and he lost their desperate wrestle, head cracking on the pavement.  Greyback hesitated, then, maybe wondering if he'd accidentally killed Remus, and blindly Remus struck out, grabbed the hand locked in his collar, and flattened it to his throat.  He craned his head back, exposed as much of his throat as he could, and Greyback's fingers tightened, threatening to crush.

'Because you're mine,' Remus gasped.

Greyback stared down at him with mad eyes.  Eyes that blinked, eyes that dropped to his own hand on Remus' neck.

'You're mine,' Remus told him.  'You're mine.  Do you hear me?  I came back for you.  You do this and it won't mean anything.  And it does.  We both feel it.  You're mine.  And I'm yours.'

For a moment, just a moment, the fingers tightened.  Darkness threatened to haze him over.  He was choking.  He was dying.

And then they released.  They caressed.  Greyback stared down at him, as bewildered as that child.  His thumb pressed to the pulse in Remus' throat.

'Fenrir,' Lynch said, and then-- 'Run!'

The clap of air forcefully expelled by a body appearing in its space was doubled, tripled, quadrupled.  Aurors.

Greyback rolled off.  Someone shouted a hex, like lightning striking the sand, magic bursting.  Lynch was gone, two wizards in Ministry colours tearing off after him.  Three more went after Greyback.  Yelling.  Boots pounding.  The Muggles screamed again, wailing at what they must have thought was a new invasion.  The Aurors were burning things indeed, but only the revenants, the churchyard dead who wobbled here and there throughout the square.  Remus lay where he was, unmoving.  Maybe they thought him a Muggle, at first, because none of the Aurors came after him immediately, and he stirred slowly, nerves coming suddenly alight again.  Had to go.  Run.  He did have to run, he couldn't be caught here--

He was at the bench when the Expelliarmus him from behind.  His wand flew out of his hand, and the force of the spell knocked him flat.  He fell, striking the edge of the bench, and fire flashed along his ribcage as ropes twined around him, locked him in a full body-bind shoulder to the ankle.  Dragged him over dirt and broken glass, dropped him face-down in a slick of something that must have been blood.  A foot on the back of his head held him down, and a wand dug into his cheek.

'You're under arrest,' the Auror panted.  'By order of the Ministry.  You're--'  The Auror turned him, and stared not with hatred but with consternation.  'Remus,' Kingsley Shacklebolt whispered.  'Oh, fuck.'

 

 

**

 

 

Light.

Remus buried his eyes in his arm.  His head throbbed, and he blinked, blinded, as footsteps walked toward him across the stone.  Someone stood over him, threateningly near him, and Remus put up his head stiffly.  The hand extended toward him was a tear-sheened blur, resolving slowly into a hand holding a cup.  It steamed.  Tea.

Kingsley held the cup til he was sure Remus could manage it with shackled wrists.  Tea.  It hit his empty belly with a gurgle, and though it wasn't quite hot enough to scour the hollow feeling out of him, he relished it.  Kingsley busied himself transfiguring a chair as Remus sipped it down.

'Do you want another?' Kingsley asked, seating himself.

'Could I?'

'I'll have it brought up with your meal.'

'Ah.'  Remus cradled the empty cup between his palms.  The swirl of sediment and leaves against the bakelite seemed portentious.  He'd been shit at Divination, though, and he couldn't read his future there.

Well enough.  He could read Kingsley's uneasy expression far easier.

'Ah?' Kingsley repeated.

'If I'm to be fed, you're not releasing me.'

Kingsley glanced over his shoulder.  'Not yet,' he hedged.  'The boy you saved.  He's been clear you prevented him from being bitten.  It's in your favour.'

'But I was still there.'

'Yes.'

His holding cell was nothing but bare walls and a hole in the corner for human necessity.  He didn't know if Lynch or Greyback had been caught, if the Aurors had been able to trace any of the dark wizards who'd razed the village.  He didn't ask.  Kingsley had no reason to tell a prisoner that, and even this much kindness was going a little far if Kingsley had to explain why he was personally interrogating a former classmate through such avant garde methods as cream tea.

Instead, he asked, 'The boy.  Who is he?'

'Someone's son.'  Kingsley shifted on his chair, having evidently forgotten to transfigure himself a cushion.  'One of the British seats on the International Confederation of Wizards.  The boy was there visiting an aunt.'

Coincidence.  He doubted it.  A camp of werewolves a few hour's walk from a highly placed target.  Some things didn't need much explanation.

'I don't think it's new,' Remus said.  He cleared his throat.  He'd swallowed too much smoke in the fires.  His lungs felt sore.  His whole body felt sore.  'The scars would be enough to taint anyone.  I've seen Greyback bloody between the moons.'

'If they don't report it and we don't catch it in the act, no way of knowing,' Kingsley said.  He trailed off on the last word.  'You did save that boy, Remus.'

'This time.'

'We've Obliviated the Muggles.  Eight dead.  Miraculous it wasn't more.'

'What did you tell them happened to them?'

'Slurry spill,' Kingsley said.  'There's an inactive mine nearby.  Sparked an electric fire.  Closed off all access.  The Muggle government cooperated.  Got up a blockade of their own to hide our work.'

'What was that illusion?' Remus asked then.  'The illusion in the sky?'

Kingsley let out a deep exhale.  'The dark mark, they call it,' he said heavily.  'It seems to be their totem, the skull and snake.  We know from a source that their inner circle have it tattooed on their arms.'

Source.  Snape?  Possibly.  And, Remus recalled dully, he'd seen Snape protecting his arm when everyone had begun shouting about moles at the Order meeting.  Hadn't taken off his shirt to screw Remus in the laundry.  Had he been there this morning?  Snape wouldn't lose his head, that Remus believed.  Maybe he'd been the one who'd called it to a halt and managed to vanish the dark wizards before they'd goaded a werewolf into biting an innocent child.

'Death Eaters,' Kingsley said.  'They're called Death Eaters.  They cast the Dark Mark over their-- sites.'

They sat in mutual quiet, then, neither inclined to speak.  Kingsley's shoes had grime on them.  Remus' probably did, as well, though they'd taken his boots.  His coat, his clothes.  The garment they'd given him was, loosely construed, trousers and a shirt, deliberately institutional but not quite a prisoner's uniform.  It smelled better than his clothes.

Eventually there was a knock at the door, and Kingsley rose to hold a quiet exchange with someone who stayed on the other side of the door.  Kingsley glanced back at him, nodded to whatever he heard.

'Remus,' he said, 'you've a visitor.'

He expected Dumbledore.  James or Sirius, maybe, Kingsley might have thought to contact them.  Someone from the Order, summoned to make this charge go away quietly, so he could get back to the werewolves, back to his mission.

Kingsley opened the door wide and stood respectfully aside for a hooded man, demurred with a quiet, 'Sir,' and shut them in.

A glint of gold on the right hand.  Wedding ring.  The man hesitated on the hem of his hood, then pushed it back.

'Dad,' Remus said, shocked.

'RJ.'  Lyall Lupin sat stiffly in Kingsley's chair.  His hands twisted over each other in his lap.  There were bags under his eyes, new lines carved beside his mouth.  His beard was nearly all grey, now.  He'd got old, somehow, in the years since they'd seen each other.  But from the way he avoided looking Remus full in the face, what he saw in his son was far worse.  Remus scratched his ragged hair behind his ears, rubbed at the stubble on his cheeks.  There was dirt and blood caked into his fingernails.

'They called you up,' Remus realised.

'I still have contacts in MLE,' his father said.  'You remember Bernard Fables in Regulation and Control.  He saw your name come across the sheets.  Rang me up.  Was sure it was all a misunderstanding.'

That he could still blush after everything he'd seen this day was a thing to marvel at.  He stared at his father's white knuckles.

'Nothing to say?' Lupin demanded sharply.  'I deserve an explanation out of you, though what the hell you could say to even begin to--'

'Dad,' he said.  'Dad-- just don't.'

At least with Kingsley the quiet had been full of secrets they couldn't speak aloud.  The quiet with his father was full of things that had been said too many times and couldn't bear a repeat now.

'How's Gran?' he asked finally, when he couldn't bear it anymore.

Lupin swallowed.  'There's no reason for her to know.'

'No.  Of course not.'

'She doesn't remember much.'  Lupin turned his head stiffly at some noise in the corridor.  It passed them by.  'Pictures help.  Sometimes.'

He didn't ask if there were pictures of himself.  He knew there weren't.  They'd stopped taking pictures, his parents, after the bite.  They'd always been afraid to leave evidence.

His throat was sore.  His head was fit to pop off, and he wished it would, to rid him of this headache.  The light was a stabbing pain in his eyes.  He closed them, stuck his thumbs hard against the sockets, pressing down.  'Why'd you come, Dad,' he rasped.

For all the times he'd claimed to be visiting his father, to actually be in a room with him now was bizarre.  Smaller than he remembered.  Shoulders rounder.  Face thinner.  Shoes still shined, feet placed so precisely together before him.  Best foot forward, Lyall Lupin always said.

Said, now, as if it hurt to even utter the words, 'I've tried to intercede with the Wizengamot on your behalf.'

Oh, no doubt it did hurt, that.  'They'll know I'm your son,' Remus said.  He dropped his hands to stare at his father.

'Yes.'

'They'll know you have a werewolf son.'

'Don't take that shirty tone with me, young man.'

'An unregistered werewolf,' Remus overrode him.  'Dad, it's an imprisonable offence.'

'I doubt they'll bother with the paperwork.'  Lupin shrugged jaggedly.  'Sixteen year old case.  They've more recent to worry about.  A fine, quite probably.  I--'

'I'll pay it,' Remus said, guilt pricking him.  'I've got a little saved...'

'I'm your father and the choice not to register you was mine,' Lupin said severely.  'And I will take the consequences if there are any.  It's down to me you were out there with that gang of, gang of--'  His chest heaved beneath his tweed jacket.  'Is it true it was _him_?'

For a moment he thought his father referenced Lord Voldemort.  But there had long been another He Who Must Not Be Named in their lives.

'Fenrir Greyback,' Remus said.  'Yeah.  Him.'

'How could you, RJ?'

He could have dropped heavy hints.  His father would have been pacified to think there were reasons.  But, in the end, Remus didn't try.  He said only, 'There's no where else for me to go, Dad.'

Lupin thrust himself to his feet.  He skittered a bit, making a strange path to the door, raised his hand to knock and then didn't.  He faced away from Remus, though, as if he couldn't bear to look back.  He said, 'The Wizengamot will give you a reduced sentence, in consideration for your intercession with the Hamadani boy.  A month in Azkaban.'

It was neither so bad as he'd dreaded nor especially considerate; a week could break a strong man, and Remus had little by way of happy memories to sustain himself near a prison full of Dementor guards for so many days.  He paled, and knew it, felt it wash over him as if to drown him.  He didn't panic, though, he had no panic left in him, not now.  He hugged his knees to his chest, and breathed.  He'd survive.  He'd live.  He'd emerge the other side of Azkaban as he'd done every other rotten thing in a life full of them.

'Can you please tell Auror Shacklebolt I'd like to speak to him,' he said, vaguely proud of his level tone, and hardly noticed that his father didn't say good-bye when he left.

Kingsley brought that promised meal, and the cup of hot tea.  He set the tray on the chair, kindly pretending not to notice the chair wasn't supposed to stay, and that the cloth napkin was actually a full blanket.  Remus plied the rough weave between his fingertips.

'Tell the Headmaster I'll go back when this is done,' he told Kingsley softly.

'He can't possibly ask it,' Kingsley whispered, eyes wide.

'A month in Azkaban is a badge of honour amongst thieves.  I'll make good on it.'

'I think I'd like to shake your hand,' Kingsley said, a long moment later.  'With men like you, Remus, we can't lose.'

'Ask those Muggles what we can lose,' Remus said, and drank his tea.


	8. He Touched The Solid Bottom Of Despair And There Took Ease

The bread hit the stone and rolled through the bars.  It was too stale to shed crumbs on its journey, arriving in a lumpen bump at his knee.  The loaf was riddled with mould, nearly blue in the shadows.  Remus shoved it away from him toward the three loaves already ignored in the corner of his cell.  He pressed his cheek to the damp wall.

The Dementor hovered before him.  They often lingered, the Dark Creatures, and it seemed to Remus that some had favourites amongst the prisoners.  He'd got an admirer in his first week.  One Dementor had looked very alike to the next til he'd learnt to identify the only corporeal characteristics of their appearance: this one didn't glide quite so far off the ground, preferring to hunch and loom, and the bedraggled hem of its long dark robe dragged on the left.  They had hands, or something akin to hands, and this one would reach through the bars to Remus, bringing wintery ice and hollow horror.  Something clammy brushed his cheek, and with a shudder Remus turned away, huddling into the far wall.  Dinner for someone at least.

They flowed out of him, memories.  He'd fought it, the first few days, sick with the violation.  Now, sick with exhaustion, he only let it wash over him, inevitable and unstoppable.  Mum at the sideboard hanging stockings from the pine branches, humming carols in her sweet high voice.  Grandfather winking at him as he triumphantly played a full house.  Benjy Fenwick's fingers clenching softly in his hair, mouth moist with peppermint.  Sirius in the shower, catching him looking, laughing, too bold and flush with himself to be offended.  Beating off, breath ragged, spine arched, yes, yes, close, ahhh.  The Prefect Badge arriving in the post, it looked brand new, the newest thing he'd ever owned maybe, not a single scratch, and if the prick of the silver needle burnt his werewolf skin he could not be prouder to wear it.

And then, of course, it began to change.  There was less happiness to find each time.  The dark came so quickly now.  He had so much dark in him to plumb, coiling around in him and just waiting, just waiting for the beckoning rictus grin of the Dementor beyond the bars--

Lily squirming in her seat, glowing nearly red as her hair as the Head Girl badge was pinned to her cloak.  James sneaking her sideways glances, his own badge burnished bright.  Remus hugged his books to his chest.  Better marks than James, who'd only got Es on every OWL but Herbology and DADA.  Don't be jealous, Moony, James said breezily, it's not the end of the world.

Don't be jealous, Moony, Sirius said, eyes hard and hurt.  You know what my family's like.  I've got to go somewhere, haven't I?

Don't be jealous, Peter whispered.  Only you know you wouldn't have wanted to go with us anyway, you've never cared about Quidditch.  I'll bring you a souvenir, shall I?

Remus dug the balls of his thumbs into his eyeballs.  Someone was screaming.  Not him.  His Dementor turned the great vacant hood to the right, not retreating, not yet.  The scream trailed off to sobbing.  Soon even that was quiet.  Remus sucked in a deep breath.

Dad!  Dad!  I'm scared.  I'm scared, please let me out.

I won't hurt anyone, I swear.  I'd never hurt anyone.

Severus Snape, all white face and wide eyes.  He stood his ground as Remus neared him, brave.  Nearly brave enough.  When Remus reached out a hand, Snape shuttled his bony legs into motion and shoved past him.  Remus felt him shaking.  I only wanted to apologise...

So much blood.  He'd never seen a man die like that before, throat torn open.  That the human body held so much blood.  They shoved his face down against it, it swarmed him, hot and iron-scented, it was on his lips, his first taste of human blood.

Greyback rolled him over, Greyback put a hand on his throat.  Hold still, lovely, won't be but a moment longer.

Dad.  Dad, please.  Please open the door.  Please let me out.

Remus swiped at his face.  Tears.  He wiped them away only because the salt had begun to dry and crack his skin.  He stared listlessly at the sheen on his palm.  Pretty, nearly.  Catching the light like that.

Light.

He looked up.  Yes.  Light.  Almost painfully bright, after so long in near darkness.  He shielded his eyes as he crawled near the bars.  His Dementor reached down for him, eager at this sudden change, and ice swarmed him like thousands of ants as it strained through the bars to touch him--

'Be gone,' a brisk voice scolded, and the Dementor sullenly obeyed, retreating, chased by the glow of a Patronus.  An eldritch hedgehog waddled up the corridor and stood on its hind legs at Remus' cell, peering at him with ghostly gaze.  Remus touched it, and shivered as warmth spread through his hand.

A pair of shiny shoes arrived just behind the hedgehog.  'Lupin, Remus John,' the woman said shrilly.

His voice was scratchy, having gone unused so long.  'Yes,' he croaked.

She was middle-aged, her hair unremarkable, her robes plain and black, her wand just a piece of wood.  Her only distinguishing feature was her bright lip, purplish in the glow of her Patronus, ghoulish, as if she were a creature all alone in this darkness, too real to be sustained for long.  He feared for her, suddenly, fragile vulnerable thing.

'The moon is full in two days,' she said.  'Arrangements have been made for the safety of the other prisoners.'

That at least explained the ache in his joints, the fuzzy emptiness of his head.  He'd feared other dire reasons.  It was the first moon he'd ever experienced without some physical sense of the passage of time, but there was no time here.

The woman glanced up and down the corridors.  Remus could see nothing beyond his own cell, where he'd arrived hooded and would, at termination of his sentence, be similarly escorted off the island.  He only knew there was water because he could hear it, the roar of waves crashing on all this dripping wet stone, because the smell of salt was just strong enough for the nose of a burgeoning werewolf to catch beneath the odour of starving mad prisoners beyond human filth, beyond even the must and rot of the Dementors.  And this woman-- she had a scent that was different even than that, and it wasn't til she reached beneath her cloak and withdrew a stoppered phial that he realised it was a scent he knew.

Wolfsbane.

'The Dark Lord appreciates your loyal service,' she whispered, her red lips barely moving.  Her eyes gleamed in the light of her Patronus.  And then she set the phial between his bars, just in reach, and then she turned and walked away, her shiny heels clicking on the tile.

His Dementor was back, as soon as the light of her magic faded.  Remus snatched the phial and retreated back to his wall, bare feet numb, knees bruising as he fumbled.  He hit the wall with a thud and slid low into a ball, only just escaping the grasp of its straining claw.  He was too cold to shake.  It stared him down, and Remus squeezed his eyes tightly shut, for all it didn't help.  Winter on Cardiff Bay, the rich golds and reds of Cardiff Castle that was, his father told him, a little like Hogwarts would be, when he was old enough to go.  Mum's drawn face, her eyes falling away from his.  If, she corrected, not unkindly, but firmly, always If.  Everything always If, and he hadn't known there was such a thing as Always til Sirius had put a finger to his lips and transformed before his eyes--

Remus woke himself from the delerium by biting his knuckle.  The brief pain was nothing after unnumbered days of resorting to that trick; his hands were riddled with scars inflicted by human teeth, for once.  But it reminded him of the coming moon, and the unexpected choice he held in his hand.

He'd go mad around this many people.  Even one or two humans nearby was enough to awaken rage in a werewolf.  Dozens, hundreds-- he'd be beserk.  He might well kill himself trying to get past those bars.  If he broke through, if he didn't kill anyone else, the Dementors would surely stop him, and that fate was unimaginable.  It wasn't much of a choice, from that angle.  But what she'd said.  The Dark Lord.  They knew him.  There was no doubt about that now.  They knew him and they believed him on their side.  Taking their wolfsbane of his own volition would confirm it.

Not taking it would expose him to questions.  Assuming he lived.  He wished suddenly for Dumbledore, who would look at him with wise eyes over those sparkling gold spectacles and say something in his deep warm voice.  Assured of your innocence in this, Remus, my boy.  Dangerous to have told your friends such a secret, but, perhaps, some secrets are more dangerous unshared.  However...

The pit they dropped him in for the transformation was a foot deep at least of artic seawater, but it did have one advantage.  The Dementors stayed at top, watching him through the silver grate.  He was-- satisfied.  But even that was a distant emotion, a faint pulse that came and was gone immediately thereafter.  He drank the last of the wolfsbane just as the fat white moon appeared overhead.  It bathed him in a soft cold glow, and he closed his eyes and turned up his face toward it, ready.

 

 

**

 

 

'You get ten minutes in the shower,' the Auror said.  He was gentle enough, despite his gruff voice, and though he had a habit of hauling Remus about by the elbow it also put him in position to steady Remus when he wobbled, which was every other step.  'Won't be hot at first, but don't yank it to the highest, you'll get burnt.  Once you're out there's an inspection, and I know it's undignified but there it is, so no back-talk.  We'll sign out your clothes and things and have a nice comfortable chat over your paperwork, and then you walk out of here a free man.  Clear?'

Remus cringed at the sudden bright glare as the Auror swished his wand at the lamps.  'Clear,' he rasped.

'In you go.'  No privacy curtain, though Remus was too dazed to look for one.  He felt curiously muffled, as if his ears were stopped up, and his stomach was still unhappy about flooing whilst blindfolded.  He stood staring at the valve, the slick cream-coloured tiles.  'Strip, man,' the Auror said impatiently, but got Remus started on the buttons of his soiled shirt.  Remus managed three on his own, and the drawstring of his trousers, and the Auror vanished them with a spell.  He only drew a sharp breath, then, before Remus remembered what he'd been instructed.  He hit the valve, and water shot out of the overhead.  Remus flinched, and stood trembling as chilly spray pounded against his chest.

The Auror glanced at his watch.  That got Remus moving.  He didn't know how much of his ten minutes he'd lost.  His hands didn't quite want to form about the bar of soap, and he dropped it twice.  He soaped himself sloppily, three times before he began to feel clean.  By then the water had warmed and he attacked his hair with vigour.  It felt-- good, a month of grime sluicing with a swirl into the drain.  He washed again, digging with his ragged gnawed fingernails til he was blistered pink everywhere he could reach.  He'd have gone for another round if the Auror hadn't cleared his throat.

'You have that beard on purpose or you want a shave?' the Auror asked him as he towelled dry.

Remus touched his furry cheek.  'I don't remember,' he said honestly.  'Should I?'

'Do you a recommendation.'  The Auror left the razor in the kit and put a comb in Remus' hand instead.  It trembled as if he were palsied, and he supposed he'd have only shredded his face if he'd gone ahead with it.  'There's a barber next to Fortescue's,' the Auror said.  'Tell 'em Tariq sent you.  They'll give you a proper shave, hot towel, straight blade.  Me dad always stood by it.  Trim you up, too.'

'Yeah,' Remus answered, in the space of expectation at the end of that speech.

'I'll write it down for you,' the Auror said then, and brought him back to the Examination Room to finish his processing.

It all ended with him being summarily abandoned in the Ministry Atrium, Level Eight, staring at the peacock-blue ceiling, clutching his coat and pack, dry-mouthed.  It was all too overwhelming-- so many people after so much silence, so much light after too much darkness, and every shiver of air over his skin sliced keenly as a knife.  Wet dripped down his neck from his damp hair and that was the only familiar thing.  He closed his eyes tight, crammed them shut with a rush of tears and tried-- to-- breathe--

'There you are.'  A hand closed on his shoulder and he jerked back, heart in his throat.  But it wasn't a Dementor.  It was Arthur Weasley, who only took hold of him again, more carefully this time.  'You know where you are, Remus?' Arthur asked him soothingly.

'Yes.'  He hesitated.  'I-- yes.  I just-- don't know where I'm to go.'

'You're to come with me for a hot cuppa, that's where you're to go.'  Arthur smiled brightly.  'Right this way.  Ministry Munchies all right?  Or we could go to my office, that's down to Level Two.  A bit more private?'  Seeing Remus was in no shape to make a decision that complicated, Arthur took his pack and shouldered it.  'Not far.  This way.  Just a walk to the lifts.'

It seemed to take an age, or perhaps just a blink.  Remus found his hands had been wrapped around a large mug, but when he raised it to his lips, it was not tea, but chocolate.  Cozy cheer crept through him, sip by sip, and he sat with eyes drooping, tense muscles finally releasing a month-long seizure.  When he finished the chocolate, a hand appeared with a bottle of Ogden's.  The firewhiskey wasn't quite as miraculous as the chocolate, but it entrenched the warmth and chased away the headache eating at the back of his skull.

'There you are,' Arthur said quietly.  'You look like you again.  Mostly.'

'Thank you.'  He rubbed his eyes.  Made an effort to straighten.  For office furniture, it was a comfortable chair.  Then again, he'd likely find a soft patch of dirt a comfort, after Azkaban.  It was every jot of discipline in him not to slump over the leather arm of the chair and fall straight to much-needed sleep.

But there were other more urgent needs, and he reluctantly set the whiskey aside.  'What have I missed?' he asked.

Arthur rubbed a finger over his nose.  'Been a bit of a scene around here,' he replied.  'You wouldn't-- well, obviously you've not had any news.  Our people...'

He'd expected it.  He steeled himself.  'Who did we lose.'

'Marlene,' Arthur said.  'Her entire family.  They're doing that now, targeting entire families.  Children.'  Arthur wet his lips.  'Fabian and Gideon,' he said.

'Both of them?  Arthur...'  Remus shook his head uselessly.  'I'm so sorry.  Molly?'

'Devastated.'  Arthur managed a smile.  'Proud.  Took five Death Eaters to bring them down.  That's-- oh, you'd not have heard that.  They call themselves that.  Death Eaters.'

'I'd heard.'  His hands still trembled.  He closed them to tight fists.  'I'm sorry, Arthur.  They were good men.  Bean was a sweetheart.'

'Always thought he was a bit shy, myself.  Never spoke if Gideon was there to do it for him.'

'Twins can be like that.  Gideon's the talker, is all.'

'There's more,' Arthur said, a moment later.  'This is not widely known, even amongst those of us left of the Order.  There's a prophecy.  All misty mumbo-jumbo as usual.  But we believe it's about one of our people.  There'll be a child.  "Born as the seventh month dies."  A boy.'  Arthur cleared his throat, as Remus looked up.  'Won't be ours,' he said, his voice going saw-edged.  'I'm ashamed to be relieved about that.  Molly's due in May.'

He was vaguely aware he was supposed to say Congratulations, or perhaps another Sorry.  It jumbled and jangled in his brain.  Arthur didn't wait on him, though.

'The Potters,' he said.  'The Potters and the Longbottoms.  Both due in July.  Both boys.  If this Prophecy is true, and we're at least going to act like it is, then we've got to hide them both.  For as long as it takes.'

'Of course.'

'To spare you the details, we've all more or less agreed upon the Fidelius,' Arthur said.  'We can move them to Muggle areas, bury them in enchantments.  The ultimate security would be a Secret Keeper.  I proposed you for the Longbottoms.'

He couldn't quite parse that at first.  Both Arthur's assertion that he'd been the one to nominate Remus, for whatever reason, and that he'd been nominated for the Longbottoms, who were pleasant enough to him but hardly close friends.  'Why not the Potters?'

'Only that they've got Sirius, of course.'  Arthur shrugged.  'Just telling you how things stand.  No decisions made yet.  They're thinking it over, all of them.  Thing is, no-one's entirely certain we can afford to lose three Aurors, specially with so few officially in the know about You-Know-Who.  Kingsley Shacklebolt wants you where you are, but I wanted you to know, in case Dumbledore brings it to you.  I'm not saying the werewolf problem isn't as urgent.  The Giants are never coming our side and we've lost most of the Dark Creatures, but there's more werewolves than anything else combined and if the ferals declare--'  Arthur shrugged again.  'That Fenrir Greyback is out there with the ferals.  He's been dealing with two different packs.'

'He wasn't caught?'  Arthur looked at him peculiarly, and Remus supposed his tone had come out peculiar.  He shook his head, gulped at the whiskey to cover himself.  'Only I didn't know,' he said.

'No.  There's a new one been spotted, too.  About fifty, bearded.  Irish.'

'Lynch?'

'Are you sure?'  Arthur grabbed for a quill and parchment.  'We haven't had positive identification.'

'Based on three words, maybe.'

'It's something.'  Arthur rose to hand his note to a slumbering owl, who rustled on her perch and grumbled a bit but took her delivery obediently.  Arthur opened the door for her departure, and stood leaning on it when he closed it after.  'Remus,' he said then.  'Remus, the last time we saw each other... I'm...'

If that sentence didn't end with an apology, as Remus realised with dread it might well do, then-- it could only end without an apology, and an apology was owed.  And with such suddenness they both jumped, Remus shoved to his feet.  He jabbed his arms into his coat and threw the strap of his pack over his shoulder.

'I should be going,' he said.  'Dumbledore can reach me, when it's time to make a decision on the Fidelius.'

'Oh.'  Arthur blinked.  'Right.  Of course, then.'

'Thanks for the chocolate,' Remus said.  'I, um.  I can't get out til you open the door.'

'Yes.  Quite.'  Arthur moved.  'Good luck.  Watch your back with those-- with them.'

Remus pretended to be so far out the door he hadn't heard that.  Or at least so busy walking quickly he had an excuse not to reply.  He pulled up his hood, and made every effort to get the fuck out of the Ministry of Magic.

 

 

**

 

 

The camp was gone.

Nearly all signs of its existence had been erased, though those had always been few.  There'd been no permanent structures, even the fire pit, and if he hadn't been absolutely sure of the coordinates he'd have believed himself mistaken.  As it was, it wasn't til he saw a familiar face-- or wing, as it was-- that he was sure.

Winfred came at his gesture, alighting on his outstretched arm.  'Hullo,' Remus said, stabilising himself against the weight and tentatively stroking the bird's soft wing.  Winfred bit him, but not to bleeding, which he supposed was rather fond, really.

'You've been waiting all this time, eh?' he asked the owl.  He turned in place, one last useless stare through the surrounding woods.  There was a suspicious lack of brush that could be readily burnt, a few obviously chopped tree limbs when he looked for what he knew to remain, but it could have been a decade, not a month, since this space had last been inhabited.  'Likely they uprooted right after the village,' he said softly.  'I would have.  With so many Aurors about scouring for clues.  But where've they gone?  Don't suppose you can tell me?'

Winfred hooted, not especially helpfully.  Remus wormed a bit of rock solid smoked venison from his pack and chewed off a bit to soften it.  Winfred accepted that more or less graciously, in that he nipped Remus' fingertips but only to sting.  Remus ate the rest of it himself.

'And that does me for supplies,' he sighed then.  'I'm out of ideas.  Maybe Dumbledore will have some intelligence?  He always seems to know where he wants me to be.'  His voice, rusty from lack of use so long, was still a bit froggy, and weak even to his own ears.  He could hear the river quite clearly.  There was a bit of white peeking out from the shadows, but no fresh snow.  He hadn't even tracks to follow.  He couldn't even follow his nose, and waiting another two weeks seemed pointless.  If there was any scent left to follow, it would surely be gone by then, and anyway without an assured dose of wolfsbane he had no chance of maintaining the awareness to follow a trail anyway.

Snape could make him a batch.  Snape had been making the rest of it, after all.  He wondered anew who'd got that woman in to him in Azkaban.  Perhaps it was too much coincidence to keep laying that at Snape's feet.  He was but one man and in too precarious a position to risk anything for Remus.  It was only that Remus was a known werewolf, now.  He'd gone from a mere handful to dozens since November.  The entire Wizengamot knew, now, and clearly there were leaks there, if not outright infiltration.

The Wizengamot knew.  The Wizengamot knew because his father had stepped forward.  And if there were leaks--

'Go,' he told Winfred, giving the owl a little push, and the bird launched with a disgruntled squawk.  'I can't Apparate with you side-along,' he said.  'And I've got no bloody parchment and I-- if you aren't a regular sort of bird, then make Dumbledore understand.  I'm going to my dad.'

And, with a crack of air displacing, he did.

For all the worry roiling in his chest there was not a single disturbance in the entire borough of Tameside.  Manchester to the west was a brown splotch hazed over with grey, growing fainter as early winter night fell.  Stalybridge was quiet, even sleepy, tuned only by buzzing insects and the occasional bark of a garden-bound dog.  When he popped out from beneath the footbridge over Huddersfield Canal, he startled a pair of necking teens, but spared them no mind.  He ran through town, dodging pedestrians and swooping across lanes in front of motorists, developing a tearing stitch in his side and dripping sweat in his eyes and thinking of nothing but that the sky looked calm and he heard no screams.  No Dark Mark splitting the air, no lightning taint of magic.  It wasn't til his father's block of flats swung into view that the knot in his chest released.  The light was on, third storey far right corner, and as he stood staring up he saw a shadow pass before the kitchenette window.  The thick white plaster was crumbling a bit with age, the brick mounting the stairwell pocked from decades of bad sets, but it was safe, it was whole, it was untouched.  He watched his father run a glass of water from the sink and wander off to the interior, never noticing Remus on the pavement below.

He wiped at his eyes.  Oh, he'd been afraid.  He'd been afraid, and half sure, suddenly.  Why, he didn't know.  Even if the Death Eaters did know who he was and by extension his father, why attack him?  If anything, they'd let him alone, wouldn't they, the father of someone they thought an ally?  They'd brought him the wolfsbane in Azkaban.  They were sure of him.

He turned away, drawing a deep breath of cold night air, and found his instinct hadn't been totally off.

Greyback slouched against the glass bus shelter.  He wore his big wool coat, the collar turned up by the throat open to the chill, a tatty scarf hanging loose over his big chest.  He looked a proper menace, a big man, a dangerous man, for all his hands were pocketed and he slumped with no obvious intention.  But he was looking right at Remus, and it was a look that froze him in his place.

Remus swallowed.  He actually checked the road, this time, before he crossed it, avoiding a puddle of melting snow and clutching his wand in his belt.  Greyback hardly stirred for his approach, and after a moment of waiting for his acknowledgment Remus took up stance on the inside of the glass.  It was warm where Greyback's shoulder leant.

'Pictured something different,' Greyback offered.

It took two tries to get a working voice.  'Different?'

'Like that place you had in Wales.  Fence.  The flower garden.  Painted shutters.'

Remus hardly remembered that house.  Hardly remembered living in Wales at all.  'We left when I was six,' he said.  'It was too hard to stay in one place.  People noticed.'

Greyback added nothing to that.  Remus strove for calm, but it was hard.  He wiped at his face again.  He'd undone half the good of his bath, streaking across half of England at such a frantic pace.  His hands shook again.

'Why are you here,' Remus asked.

Greyback shifted just a little, one boot advancing a half-step.  'Been here,' he answered.

He dared a glance.  Greyback stared at the flat-- the right flat, so he'd been here long enough to identify his father.  But clearly not long enough to approach.  Or perhaps that hadn't been the point.  Greyback had nothing to say to Lyall Lupin, that was a grudge long satisfied.  'Waiting for me,' Remus guessed.

'Figured you'd make you way back, once they let you out,' Greyback said.  'Seein' how you're so close to your pa these days.'

Remus licked chapped lips.  'I've got nothing to say to him.  He doesn't want to see me.'

'Because of me.'

'Because of me,' Remus corrected.  'Maybe he's not happy, but I wouldn't make him happy, being back in his life.  I think this last month is proof of that.'

Greyback's jaw moved, like granite rippling.  'You're all right, then,' he said.

'I'm all right.  I'm back.'

It was impossible to say that meant anything to Greyback.  But something horribly tight in his face eased, just minutely.  He stared at the flat, Remus stared at him, and then Remus stepped out of the shelter and faced him directly, and put out his hand, and said, 'Let's go.'

'There's no camp now.  Scattered.  I sent them off.'

'I know.  I was there.'

Greyback's pale eyes flickered.  'You went there first.'

'Yes.  I'm back.'  He reached just a little father the distance between them.  'Trust me,' he said.

He'd never pushed so far before.  Greyback inhaled sharply.  But he put his long rough fingers in Remus', and closed them tight.  He let Remus draw him away from the bus shelter and into the alley between the mechanic's garage and the empty property.  There was no-one to watch them vanish.

His tent was exactly as he'd left it, though sagging a little.  Abernethy had seen worse weather than the south and his wards had faded.  Greyback caught the sight sideways before Remus walked him over the line, and his heavy brows rose slightly when he took in the little homestead.  He cracked the ice on the rain barrel and drank a palmful.  Remus unknotted the ties for the front flap and used his wand to raise a fire in the soggy sandpit, adding sticks from the collection under a cracking tarpaulin after the flames already jumped and spat.  Greyback paced the outer edge of the clearing, though without the moon there was no light to see beyond the ring of trees surrounding them.

'Are you hungry?' Remus asked him briefly.  He didn't await an answer.  He ducked into the tent, and after a moment Greyback followed.  He watched mutely as Remus dug through his trunk and retrieved a tin of soup.  Remus upended the tin into his pot and set it to warming on the little stove.  He ran a finger round the inside of the tin and licked it.  'Oranges or apricots?' he asked.  He opened both and dropped a spoon in each tin.  When Greyback made no reply, Remus chose apricots, and sat on his cot to eat.  They were too sugared and the sweetness of it was oddly nauseating, but he ate.  He'd gone without too long in Azkaban, and there was a quaver in his gut, a pounding in his head.  Almost before he knew it he'd speared the last squishy sliver, and he drained the syrupy dregs.

'Here,' Greyback said, and gave him the oranges.

He ate those slowly, with effort.  Greyback watched every bite.  When he'd downed the oranges Greyback gestured to the soup, now gently steaming.  Remus shook his head, and Greyback pointed, commanding now.  He stood in silence as Remus spooned all of it up, not even bothering with a bowl.  When at last he was done, Greyback put out the stove, and sat beside him on the cot.  Remus realised only then he'd been standing the entire time.  Remus wiped his mouth on his sleeve, wiped his nose.  Wiped his eyes, wet again, he hardly knew why.  He pushed his hair out of his face and he steepled his hands and pressed them to his lips and then he made himself stop moving, but the stillness was somehow much worse, and he didn't know what to do then.

'Take the cot,' he said finally, and his voice was too loud, then too quiet.  'We can look for the others tomorrow.  Or whatever you want to do.  Go find the ferals.'

Greyback's hand lit on his nape, light for all its power.  Even that touch to tender muscles was pain, but Greyback rubbed steadily, and Remus allowed it.  It was near pitch dark, now, but for the glow of the fire outside the tent.  He could only see Greyback in outline.  For a moment, the wind rustling the tent made him shudder, but it was only a pale echo of the whisper of a Dementor's robes.

He wiped his eyes one final time and said levelly, 'Or we can stay.'

'RJ.'

'We could.  You and I.  We could just-- I have a little money.  We don't need anything else, do we.  No-one would know we're here.  They'd never find us.  Don't tell me you're not tempted.  You know it's shit, you know they'd cut us down in a heartbeat if we stopped amusing them.  They didn't even care enough to leave us a Portkey, they left us as bait for the Aurors--'

'Shut up.'

'We could stay here,' he whispered.  'Tell me that wouldn't be enough.'

The hand on his neck slid.  He faced Greyback on the cot, and Greyback splayed his hand wide on Remus' throat.  In the dark it was easy, almost magical how readily it happened, as if there'd never been a reason not to.  He leant across the distance between them and rested his cheek against Greyback's.  A thumb dug into his windpipe just above his collarbone, coarse stubble scraped his jaw.

Greyback pushed him down, and he went.  He spread his legs, and Greyback hulked large between them, one big hand on his hip pulling at his trousers.  The button snapped and the zip stuck and it didn't matter; Greyback's bulk bore him down, throbbing heartbeat mashed to his chest, hot breath on his throat as he bared it to crushing fingers.  Greyback rolled him, their bodies tangling, ungainly, in the way.  Hot pressure rubbed along his backside, nails scraped at his hipbones seeking and finding the spot, the same spot from sixteen years ago.  But what should have come next didn't. Hot breath on his spine, yes.  He was squashed into the blanket and they'd hardly bared skin, either of them.  Greyback pushed against him, and then didn't anymore, a weak grip at Remus' groin that lost the last of its violence in acknowledging the truth. He wasn't even hard.  His eyes were gummed shut with tears.  He lay still, let it happen.  Let it end.  Let memory fade, let the night in.  Let it wash him empty.

It was odd, he thought.  It was odd there'd been a reason for this, once.

Eventually Greyback settled.  The thick arm that gripped loosened to guard instead, coming about him slowly, almost tentatively.  The cot wasn't quite wide enough for them both, but Greyback made room for him, settling behind him, knees crooked against his knees, belly to the small of his back, his nose buried in the fur of Remus' coat.

'You're going to leave, aren't you,' Remus whispered into the dark, miserable and aching.

Greyback didn't answer.  But when Remus waked, groggy at dawn, he was alone, and he only closed his eyes and pulled the blanket over his head and refused to feel.

 


	9. We Are Homesick Most For The Places We Have Never Been

Light.  And birds.

Remus twitched into the shelter of his elbow.  He cracked a bleary eye.

'Coo,' said Winfred.  There was a letter on the ground beside him, marked with a red wax seal.  Winfred had begun nesting in the shredded remains of the last seven.

Remus curled frozen toes.  It was snowing again, he could tell by the sag of the tent's roof, the suffocating closeness of the air inside.  He pulled his hood down tight over numb ears, til the fur tickled his eyelids.  He wrapped his hands in blanket and pulled it tight across his shoulders.

'Coo,' Winfred insisted, and returned to his breakfast of bloody harvest mouse.

'Shut up,' Remus grumbled, scrunched his eyes shut, and resolutely went back to sleep.

 

 

**

 

 

He ran out of beans first.  Used up his shrivelled potatoes.  Then the last of the dried fish.  Ate his last biscuit just after midnight, not particularly caring.  When morning came, he ate a handful of snow and sat, listless, watching the sun rise in a gloomy winter sky, hesitate overhead for a brief hour, and begin its descent as if it were all far too much effort to stay up.  He went to bed without removing his coat or boots, and when he woke he did it again, too tired to move any farther than the log before his soggy unlit firepit.  Winfred flew in and out of camp, doing for himself, and Remus paid no mind when the bird disappeared again.  In rained, that night, and Remus retreated to his tent, damp and shivering.  He fell into a fitful doze, dreaming strange things that fled to muddled memory whenever he opened his eyes.  He didn't leave his cot that morning.  The moon was waxing.  His hands ached, and the still-tender scar on his belly throbbed in time with the pulse of his blood.

He thought indifferently of never rising again at all.

Only to sigh at himself.  The idea held some grey appeal, but not much by way of sound judgment.  He wasn't fanciful enough to entertain the lengths he'd need to go to contain a starving werewolf, and he hadn't the energy for the mess.  Never had.

The Apparation sucked him dry.  He bent over his knees, lightheaded and gulping at the night air, wand clenched in a clammy hand.  'Jaffa Cakes,' he spat at the misty river view, and Summerlea House appeared with a waver.  A candle burnt in the front window, as if the house had been waiting for him all along.  Then again, Dumbledore had sent him some dozen letters.  The old codger would be pleased.

All was quiet as Remus let himself in.  He left his muddy boots on the mat by the door, hung his coat on the rack.  Followed his nose to the kitchen.  A full roast sat on the counter, gently steaming.  A covered dish proved to be potatoes swimming in thick gravy and a pile of Yorkshire puds, each as large as his fist and gleaming with bacon fat.  He ate one immediately, getting a swollen burn on the roof of his mouth for his carelessness, hardly noticing as he scooped the potatoes with bare fingers.  He closed his eyes on a hot mouthful, bent to put his head on his arms.  Deep breaths.  Sense restored, he swallowed with difficulty, wiped his mouth on the tea towel, and carried the entire tray with him down the stairs to the laundry.  He left it on the floor as he shed his clothes, leaving them on the step just outside the door with his wand atop the pile, and locked himself in.

The moon rose halfway through his second helping.  He had time to lick his fingers.  The wolf would probably finish the meal, but the buttery potatoes were lost on an animal that would only want meat.  Shame.

 

 

**

 

 

When he awoke, it was to the sight of his hand in another man's hand, the blunt tip of an acacia wood wand flashing gold as it sealed a bloody rent in his flesh.

Snape started when he found Remus gazing at him.  His fingers tightened, then eased as he controlled himself.  'Steady,' he said, and put the wand next to Remus' cheek.  'You were... violent.'

'No wolfsbane,' Remus said, or tried to.  His voice emerged on a croak.  He coughed, and the wand dragged along his jaw.  A tingle turned into warmth, and the pain receeded.

'No wolfsbane,' Snape repeated softly.  Something that might nearly have been embarrassment brought his eyes low.  He tucked a soft blanket to Remus' chest.  'Albus had hoped you'd come sooner.  He-- we... were aware you had no access to it.  The man who usually collected it for the werewolves didn't come, this time.'

'Lynch?  Why?'

'Likely he's dead.'  Snape reached into the fuzzy edges of Remus' vision and returned with a glass of cool water.  He put it to Remus' lips and held it there til he sipped, and even went so far as to wipe away the drips that escaped.  'Likely they all are,' he said sombrely.

Remus pushed himself upright on an elbow.  'How?  Death Eaters?'

'Not us.  Greyback.  He's disappeared, but Shacklebolt's been reporting the corp-- remains.  As they're found.'  Snape hesitated, lips parted.  'I'm sorry,' he ventured, forming the words as if unused to their composition, but finding them necessary nonetheless.

Remus was shaken.  It hadn't happened at the camp; he'd have noticed that.  But when?  Before Greyback had tracked down his father?  In the days since he'd left Remus behind?

'You'll want a bath,' Snape said then, a bit too sharp for the transition, and Remus blinked dumbly at him.  'I rather think you haven't had one in a while.'

No proper wash since the shower at the Ministry.  He was vaguely abashed at his grimy state.  He'd not even thought of it in the two weeks he'd malingered in his tent in Abernethy.  He'd gone ripe, and the transformation had put it over into repellent.  Snape seemed to take his hot face for permission, and set about getting him to his feet with his modesty in place, draping the blanket over him toga-like and escorting him out of the laundry.  Remus didn't miss the flick of his wand at the bloody floor.  ' _Scourgify,_ ' Snape whispered, and stains vanished, along with the spilled remnants of last night's supper.

He navigated the stairs with some difficulty, joints popping.  Snape's arm hovered an inch from contact, ensuring he didn't topple backwards.  It took a bit of mutual difficulty to get him into the tub, and once at least Snape's stoicism broke to a bit of grumbling about the imposition on his time and pride, but at last Remus lay chest-deep in soapy water, lulled by the heat and relearning all the glorious pains of his human form.

'Here,' Snape said, dropping a flannel on his knobby knee, and then he sat on the toilet, slicked his hands with shampoo, and slid his hands into Remus' wet hair.

'I'm dreaming,' Remus observed.

Snape's brisk lathering paused.  'Are you making some kind of remark or do you really think that?'

'Dunno,' Remus said, momentarily doubting it himself.  Snape slowly resumed scrunching against his scalp.  'No head injury?'

'Nothing new,' Snape murmured.  'No accounting for natural deficiency.'

That was more reassuringly Snape-like.  Remus rubbed the soap bar against the flannel and promptly dropped them both.  Snape's sigh of agitation was commendably realistic.  He rolled up his sleeve and reached into the water to retrieve the bar, snatched up the flannel, and did it himself.

Remus touched the damp forearm stretched over his shoulder.  'You didn't have that before,' he said.  It looked like a tattoo, though it was both too vivid and too indistinct for ink.  A skull and serpent.

Snape said, 'It's the Dark Mark,' and handed him the sudsy flannel.  'Wash,' he instructed.

'Like the illusion in the sky.'

'Wash, Lupin.'  Snape waited for his obedience.  Remus swiped jerkily at his chest, and after a moment Snape resumed scrubbing his hair.  'Yes,' he said then.  'An icon he designed for himself in his wildly misspent youth, I believe.  He surrounds himself with symbols.  I have presumed it to be an indicator of his grandiose delusions.  Kings have all manner of regalia and he fancies himself an overlord.'

'It's ugly,' Remus said.  'Not very grand at all.'

'People fear ugliness.  Disfigurement.  You know this as well as I.'  Snape smoothed his hair back.  'That which is hidden in the shadows is always more terrifying.'

Or more enticing.  From a man who'd once slipped down a dark passageway to the Shrieking Shack just to learn a secret, and who'd made the same mistake, magnified a thousand fold, on whatever day he'd agreed to meet a man who called himself the Dark Lord.  But Snape could hardly be blamed.  He'd at least made the same right choices after his failures.

Rinsed and pruned all over, Snape left him to towel dry.  Remus draped the damp cloth about his waist and fumbled with the cabinet over the sink til he got a new toothbrush and paste.  The cabinet kept wanting to produce razors and scissors, a statement about his unkempt hair and beard, but Remus ignored the hints.  He did accept the cream for his wounds, daubing it into raw scarlines.  The puckered wounds in his belly and shoulder had settled to odd indentations, sore at the edges, standout even amongst the map of older marks that crossed his body.  He was nothing to look at, in the harsh light of the steamy bath.  His skin was sallow, his eyes red and bruised.  He'd always been lean, but he was down to bare bone now.  Even Severus Snape was stirred to pity.

He swiped a wet hand over the mirror, smearing his reflection, and spat bloody paste into the sink.

Snape nudged at the half-open door.  'There's some clothes for you,' he said, offering a folded set of striped pyjamas.  'Yours?'

'No.'  Too fine for anything in his possession.  But the pocket over the chest was embroidered with his initials, RJL.  'An asking wardrobe?'

'Ah.  That would explain it.'  Snape didn't go, and Remus didn't ask him to.  He slid the trousers on beneath his towel, but accepted Snape's assistance when his clumsy fingers flubbed the small pearl buttons of the shirt.  'There's a bedroom made up.  Presumably for you.'

'I'm not tired.'

'Bollocks,' Snape said.  'Go to bed, Lupin.'  Snape finished the last of the buttons.  He brushed the turned collar flat.  Then, pointer finger curled protectively as if he might retract it at any moment, he tucked away a lock of Remus' wet hair, curling it behind his ear.  It fell immediately, swinging over his eye, and Snape bit his lips together as he reached for it again.

Remus turned his face away.  'Are you even really gay?'

'What?'

'Homosexual.  Attracted to me.  You aren't.  I can see you bracing yourself every time.'

A beat passed.  Snape's adam's apple bobbed as he swallowed.  'Keeping my options open,' he said then, a thin whisper of dry candour.

'We're not in a _Witch Weekly_ serial,' Remus told wearily.  'And it's contemptible.  And irritating.  I'm not going to fall all over the first man who shows a little affection.'

'I thought that was exactly what happened with Black.'

'You're not Sirius.'

'No.  I'm not asking for something without exchange.'

Remus shoved him.  It was a poor substitute, when what he wanted was to smack that prominent nose right off Snape's face, but they were standing too close and the bath wasn't really large enough for that kind of tussle, and anyway as soon as Snape hit the sink and winced at the impact Remus was remorseful, so he put two fingers to the sore point between his eyes and discovered his eyes were wet and he was going to cry in front of Snape, who would probably take it as confirmation Remus really was some kind of limp-wristed shirtlifter swooning over a broken heart.

'Go away,' he said, horrified to hear his voice quaver.

Snape kissed him.  Framed his face with those elegant hands and coaxed him with soft lips, stroked his neck.  'Pick your battles,' he advised.  'And shave.  Your beard is scratchy.'

'Oh, fuck you.'

'If that's what you'd like to do.'

'What'll it cost me?' Remus demanded caustically.  'What do you think's coming that I need to stand in your path and take it for you?'

'The day is going to come,' Snape said, quite seriously, 'when Dumbledore isn't there to batter our Order with his older-wiser-leader act.  I'll need someone trusted to vouch for me.  Albus and Potter and Black, they're all behind you.  You'll be behind me.'

He could only laugh.  Snape stared at him, at first astonished and then offended, and the closer it got to high dudgeon Remus laughed all the harder.  His breath hitched weakly in his chest, and Snape huffily let him go, and he grabbed the sink to prop himself upright as he wheezed.  'Oh,' he managed.  'Oh, you don't even know.  You don't even know how badly you've picked.  I can almost feel-- almost feel sorry for you.'

'You're hysterical,' Snape told him coldly.

'You're bloody hilarious.'  He wiped his streaming eyes.  His hands shook, and he dug them into his sockets, pressed them flat to his mouth.  Maybe he was cracked.  He felt himself cracking, right down the middle, everything in danger of spilling out.  Only when Snape took him by the wrists and kissed him again did the shudder begin to ease.  They scraped at each other with teeth and nails and he was pinned to the door and then pinning Snape and he stopped caring about the motives.  All the painstaking work of dressing him was for naught, when Snape tore at the drawstring of his trousers and a button from the shirt popped off and fell somewhere under the tub's golden lion's paws and he bit Snape's swollen red lip and Snape licked his ear and then he was on his knees, Snape's hands clutching at his shoulders.

'Have you ever had your cock sucked?' he wondered, lowering the placket of Snape's trousers and cradling a hardening flushed organ that twitched eagerly at his touch.

He looked up to see Snape's mouth hanging open.  Silently, choked, Snape bobbed his head.  Yes.

'Whoever it was,' Remus said, 'I guarantee I have more practise than she did.'  He guided the leaking tip to his lips and then between them, spreading over the crown and laving the tender underside with his tongue.  He washed it gleaming and sleek with his mouth and let it slip out again, bobbing at his chin.  Snape grabbed him by the hair and jabbed it back in.

Whether expertise or desperation, it was considerably shorter than their previous tryst in the laundry.  His knees were only starting to protest the ceramic tile and his jaw the intrusion when Snape gave a head-to-toe convulsion and came.  Remus dropped back on his haunches and leant over to spit into the toilet bowl.  Snape was holding himself upright by the towel rack, panting slightly, his dick laying soft on a bed of his linen underthings, his flat belly with its trail of dark hair heaving with each breath.

'Practise that-- skill, did you,' Snape gasped.

'It was enough for Greyback.'  It was petty to say, petty like the insignificant flare of satisfaction he got from Snape's eyes widening just a millimetre more.  'I was born with one curse and I'll probably die of the other one.  Anything in between is inevitable.  It's funny, isn't it?  All the things that make me wrong are the things that win wars.  I don't get that kind of power all that often.'

Snape surprised him then by reaching out.  There was no flinch in him this time, or at least only a very small one, as he brushed at the tangles he'd left in Remus' hair with his fists.  'How very Slytherin.'

'I never gave a damn about Houses,' he said wearily.  'Not my own, and definitely not yours.'

Snape's fingers paused at his cheeks.  'I've never once said the right thing with you, have I.'

'Stop talking, then,' he answered.  He closed his eyes.  Snape drew him close, and they stood there together as the last of the humid bath air faded away, nothing between them but human touch to anaesthetise the ache.

 

 

**

 

 

'Calvin,' Remus said tightly.  The old man had only a single bite, and had likely died of the shock.  His was the only body that looked peaceful.  It was gruesome, Wizarding pictures that didn't move.  Kingsley set out the next photograph, turning the dossier to face him across the kitchen island.  'Tabrett,' Remus identified him.  Tabrett's throat had been torn out.  In death he was tinged blue at the lips, blood still caked to what remained of his neck, though a draped sheet considerately shielded much of the wound from sight.  'He was one of the newer ones,' Remus said dully.  'Only turned a few years ago.'

'Do you know who turned him?'

'He said his uncle.  Killed by Aurors later that night.'  Another body, and Remus breathed shallowly, unwilling to taste this cold death-tainted memory.  'Jules.  Jules Fuller.  He was-- he was from Dorset, I think.  Muggle.  Most of them were.'

James produced the final dossier.  'This one we know,' he said.  'But I'll take your confirmation.'

Remus nodded tensely.  'Lynch.'

'Found him first.  They delivered him-- the body, I mean-- left him right out front the Ministry.  Bold as brass, even Muggles saw him before we got it cleaned up,' Kingsley sighed.

'That Confundus charm you identified,' James added.  'No telling how long they've been using it, but it's around every corner now, it seems.'

For all the violence done to the other men, none of them had been so deliberately brutalised as Lynch.  His face was clawed.  His shoulders, peeking beneath the drape, could have been ground beef sooner than a human's remains.  The sheet was red more than white.  Remus only recognised him by the salt and pepper hair.

Remus cleared his throat.  'You're not laying all this at Greyback's feet?'

'Can't,' Kingsley agreed glumly.  He piled the MLE paperwork and shoved it into his satchel.  'He's the only one with motive, the only one who knew all these men, so far as I can tell, but a rampage of this magnitude seems a little incredible.  There's not near as many defencive wounds as you'd think, specially considering he can't have attacked them all at the same time.  They must have been surprised, most of them.  Ambushed.  That says to me--'

'The ferals,' Remus guessed.

'They've cleared out,' James said.  He eyed Remus for reaction.  'At least two of the known packs.  Up and left.  Neither hide nor-- sorry.  That slipped out.'

'It's all right,' he shrugged impatiently.  'But you've no clues where they've gone?  I find _that_ incredible.  There's hardly anywhere they're legally allowed to be, those laws date back centuries.  There's no circumstances I can think of for giving up the few rights the Ministry gives werewolves.'

'For going into hiding right after slaughtering the pack linked to Death Eater atrocities?'  Kingsley met his eyes solemnly.  'I can think of a reason.  Looks an awful lot to me like they've chosen a side.'

The viciousness of the wounds took on new dimension.  'But you've not found Greyback,' Remus pushed, then hesitated, unsure if he truly wanted to know.

Unaware of his turmoil, Kingsley answered readily.  'No, we've not.  He's vanished clear off the face of the earth.  But here's where it gets interesting.'  He searched his satchel and produced a new roll of documents.  He flipped dog-eared parchment and showed Remus a formal report.  'Confirmed sighting, day before the last full moon.  With the Bloodmoon Creeks.'

The larger of the feral clans in England.  'He hates the ferals,' Remus said slowly, but the proof was there in ink.  'I think he was turned by a feral, maybe even raised with them.'

'Then maybe they'd listen to him, if he warned them off You-Know-Who.'  Kingsley let the parchment roll up again.  'Remus, you hear what I'm saying?  I think you did it.  I think you kept the werewolves out of this war.'

'Greyback did, you mean.'  His chest felt oddly hollow.  He reached for his tea, abandoned when Kingsley had brought out the photographs for him.  It was cold, but he drank it anyway, to quell the queasy turn of his stomach.

'You were there to get Greyback to see sense,' Kingsley said reasonably.  'Remus, this is a triumph.  Frankly, we need a triumph.'

'It's not a triumph.  They're in hiding, not on our side.'

'They're not against us.  Given the alternative, I don't care if we never see them again.'  Remus felt eyes boring into the top of his skull, and refused to look up.  After a long moment, Kingsley said, 'I don't pretend to know how you feel.  But I don't blame you for feeling it.  Nor will anyone else.'

James exhaled slowly.  'They will, probably,' he said.  Remus glanced up, tweaked, and James shrugged at him.  'We both know it.  We all know it,' he said, with a firm look at Kingsley, who dropped his eyes in chagrin.  'But let's leave aside prejudice and focus on fact.  Remus, what Kingsley's not saying is that there's a downside to the ferals disappearing.  It means they're afraid of reprisal.'

'The Death Eaters,' Remus said softly.

'Yes.  You've been telling us for months the werewolves didn't have a choice about cooperating, and I've come to agree with you.  We know what people are driven to when it's threats to your family.'  His voice dried up.  Remus touched his wrist, and James put his mouth through the motions of a smile that fell off shortly after.  'Tell me again,' James said then.  'What you thought when you found Greyback had tracked you down to your father's flat.'

'That he was there to...'  Remus shook his head.  'But he didn't hurt me.'

'He might have been planning to.  I think he was planning to.  Every one of those men from your camp are dead but him, Remus, him and you.'

Greyback's eyes haunted him.  The way he'd looked, in his tent that night, standing over him.  The way he'd felt in the dark, letting go.

'So what does it mean?'

'It means the Death Eaters saw your face and Greyback knows where your father lives, Moony.  You've got to go away for your own safety.  For your dad's safety.'

'What about--'  He licked dry lips.  'What about Secret Keeping for Alice and Frank.'

'You don't increase the value of the target,' Kingsley told him, smiling tiredly.  'Three for one is a little too enticing for my comfort.'

'Albus has contacts in Europe,' James said.  'There's a junior position at Beauxbatons.'

'That's the, that's the French school?  You're sending me away to some academy to tutor rich kids?'

'Wizarding kids.  It may be their war, too, if we don't follow up your win with the werewolves with something soon--'

James interrupted Kingsley again.  'You're going,' he said.  'You can be snotty about it if it makes you feel better, but you're going.  Don't you dare argue with me.'

'James--'

'No, damn it.'  James smacked the island with his fist.  Remus stared at him, and James glared him down, and Kingsley, sympathetic but smart enough not to intervene, only drummed his fingers on the formica and let the silence drag on.

'I could stay in England,' Remus tried, one last futile attempt.

'I don't even know if we're going to stay in England.  Dumbledore's saying my son may be this... may be this person in the prophecy.  We've been talking about sending Lily to her aunt in Spain.'  James slowly flattened his hands on the island.  'Just-- Remus.  Moony.  Just please do this.  We're not going to be able to save many people.  I'd like to save you.'

'And I'd like to fight!'

'Fight from Beauxbatons.'

Kingsley made a quiet contribution.  'There's foreign connexions amongst the Death Eaters.  It's not a fob job.  We need intelligence.  You've more than proved you can get it.  Half the Pure Bloods have Continental relatives and funds coming from suspicious sources outside Gringotts.  Getting one of our Order in at the Académie gets us eyes in places we'd never otherwise have.'

The argument went on another hour.  James lost his temper and broke the teapot; Kingsley repaired it, and Remus stormed out and James stormed after him, and they rowed in the garden for another tetchy twenty minutes before Kingsley announced he had to go.  James left with all of it unresolved, and Remus kicked the unoffending brick of Summerlea's outer wall and shouted every curse he'd ever heard at the burbling river and sat amid the rosebushes weeping convulsively into his hands and getting himself the hiccoughs.  And after all that, there was nothing to do but go back inside, lay in Dumbledore's guest bed and stare at the ceiling waiting for sleep that never came.

 

 

**

 

 

Winfred brought the letter.  The snowy owl was perched on the footboard in the morning, staring him down.  Remus lobbed a pillow at the bird, and received a sharp bite on his ankle.

It was an unmarked envelope.  That woke him.  He sat up beneath the dragging counterpane and tapped it with his wand, a careful ' _Finite Incantatem_ ' delivered with a cringe.  But nothing happened.  It wasn't magicked.  It was only an envelope, slightly crunchy in the middle, and when he dared to open it, he saw why.

It contained only a charred bit of red tent flap.  His red tent, left behind and, he'd thought, well warded in Abernethy.


	10. Coming Down Was The Hardest Part Of Any Climbing

'We're only going to have one chance at this,' Remus whispered. Percy's solemn face gazed back at him, and Remus clenched his fingers on his wand. 'When I give the word,' he breathed. 'See you on the other side.'

'Good luck, sir,' Percy replied quite seriously, and crouched at the ready.

'One. Two.' Remus eased onto his knees, ready to spring. 'Three!'

He and Percy burst from behind the chintz sofa and hurled themselves out. Percy gave a credible impression of a banshee's wildest shriek, and Remus fought not to grin as he added a war cry of his own. Fred and George were goners, though Fred was really the only one who tried to get away, chased off by his older brother. Remus let George keep a few steps ahead of him as they ran about the house, pretending every few feet that he was too slow or too exhausted, only to close the gap and shoot a spark with his wand that elicited a delighted screech from the toddler. George led him a merry game through the kitchen and sitting room, but when he darted for the stairs down to the laundry, Remus hustled to grab him. George had quite the set of lungs on him, happily bellowing as Remus whirled him about, and bouncing excitedly on the ottoman Remus chose as a cushioned landing. Remus permitted himself to be captured shortly thereafter, humbly sumitting to a punishment of well-deserving tickling. Fred and Percy came clattering down the stairs, saw what was up, and promptly joined forces. Remus found himself under attack from three pairs of squirmy fingers, and under that combined assault he dissolved into a man-shaped puddle of pathetic giggles.

'Boys, you leave Remus alone,' Molly called.

'Mummy!' Fred abandoned him first, tottling off on stout little legs in search of his mother. George, the more affectionate twin, gave Remus a rather sticky kiss on the cheek, and followed his brother. Remus sat up, brushing lint from his hair and shirt.

'Percy,' he said, extending a hand. 'Well fought, soldier.'

'And you, Lef'tent,' Percy answered with great dignity. Remus ruffled his crazed curls.

Arthur was in the study with Dumbledore, and waved Remus to join them when he appeared at the door. 'Kids all right?' he asked absently, pouring a tea for Remus and refreshing the two cups already on the low table.

'Grand,' Remus answered, sinking onto the chesterfield. 'You have sweet boys.'

'Rambunctious,' Arthur corrected precisely. He grinned though. 'You're a bit of a natural. Making plans, eh?'

Remus coloured as even Dumbledore turned an expectant expression on him. 'No,' he said, concentrating very hard on the sugar tongs. 'No, um, plans. For that.'

'Mm,' Dumbledore said.

'I always loved those Beauxbatons unis,' Arthur went on, oblivious to his discomfort. 'Of course there's something enticing about the Hogwarts robes as well. What are they wearing under all that black? Or not wearing, eh? Well that might just have been my Mols. Cheeky thing.'

If there wasn't plenty of living proof in the form of six young children that Molly and Arthur Weasley enjoyed an unusually devoted married life, Remus would hardly have blushed harder. Dumbledore began to chuckle. Arthur grinned around.

'Instructors don't date students at Beauxbatons,' Remus said gruffly. 'Or anywhere.'

'Quite right,' Dumbledore rescued him. 'Ah, I believe the programme is back. Turn it up, Arthur?'

The wireless produced a moment of static as Arthur touched the volume knob, then spat a tinkling three-tone ditty heralding the news hour. _'And now,'_ it announced, _'News At Nine with Boniface Bardsley. Our top story: Wizarding Britain Under Seige.'_

 _'In the opinion of this man, the Ministry have failed at both sacred duties of the elected government,'_ Bardsley lectured dryly. _'The safety of the Wizarding community is the top priority and our Minister of Magic cannot or will not submit to full questions either by the peers or the public. Eccelston continues to hide behind a wall of secrecy rather than reveal the most niggling details of his strategy-- all of which presumes he has one-- for dealing with You-Know-Who.'_

'I've come to regret that nom de guerre,' Dumbledore murmured. 'Fear of the name has only increased the titiliation of hiding from it.'

 _'Whilst the issue of security must and does require the protection of certain secrets, however, our government fails in its duty to communicate openly and truthfully with its citizens. We cannot be expected to make conscientuous decisions in an informational vacuum, yet Eccleston and his cabinet insist all will be well if we adhere mindlessly to simple rules and leave the hard thinking to them. Well I, for one, would prefer a little more basis by which to judge the performance of my elected representatives. I should like to see the numbers, Minister Eccleston, and I should like to see the proof. Is our government doing enough to keep us safe? We, Minister Eccleston, should be your judges._ '

'Here here,' Arthur said, thumping his knee.

 _'It is now my sad duty to stand in for your government and reveal what they will not,'_ Bardsley continued. _'The following bulletin represents all verified deaths and all verified missing persons reported in the last three months. To add to our list please contact WWN News; we have operators standing by for your owls. Deaths: Lilian Ainsworth, Oystermouth. Eloise O'Brien, Ealing. Maximilian Bristlebone, Hemington. Freya Bailey, Cattadale. Vervain Owens, Tetbury Upton. Alexandra Rowe, Witherly. Pritchard Flittermist, whom many of you know from his gardening show on this broadcast, of Dyserth, Wales. Missing: Morgan Connelly, East Cowick. Francesca Osborne, Smisby. Billy Chadwick, Tal-y-Bont. Lavendar Bond, London. Mordred Humphries the Third, Lower Quinton. Remus Lupin, Stalybridge. Lucian Beaulac, Rawdon. Parnella Beaulac, Rawdon. Arianne Beaulac, Rawdon. Lewis Smith, Aston Crewes. Nicholas Silverbreeze, Ufford. James Potter, Godric's Hollow. Lily Potter, Godric's Hollow. Callum Burke, Leckhampstead. Eldratch Holmes, Dunnabie. A reminder and a plea to report any verified missing or deceased persons to Wizarding Wireless Network--'_

Arthur flicked off the wireless, sprawling back in his chair. 'That's done, then,' he said, satisfied.

'I don't see the point in the deception,' Remus said, again, and again Dumbledore passed him off with a calming gesture. 'They know they've not kidnapped Lily and James. Who are we fooling?'

'Plausibility, Remus,' Dumbledore answered, as he'd done the first time. 'The longer they appear to be gone the more indelible their disappearance will become.'

'So far as we can tell they've stopped looking for you since we put you on the list,' Arthur pointed out.

'They stopped looking for me because they think Fenrir Greyback took care of it on his way out of sight,' Remus retorted. 'So long as he stays to ground they'll give up on werewolves. And I haven't got a prophecy naming my child. You-Know-Who won't give up hunting them just on WWN's word for the matter.'

'Peace,' Dumbledore implored him. 'We've bought ourselves time.'

'The Longbottoms will go on the list in a month or two,' Arthur said. 'We thought they could risk it a bit longer. Being Pureblood.'

Remus rubbed his eyes. 'Head of a pin,' he muttered.

'What's that?'

'Angels on the head of a pin. How many angels can sit on the head of a pin.' Remus managed a weary smile. 'We're living on faith.'

'My dear boy,' Dumbledore said. 'Don't we always?'

Molly knocked at the study door. She had a twin clinging to each leg, Percy peeked out behind her hip, and her newest was cradled in her arms. 'Luncheon,' Molly informed them all. 'Arthur, please--'

'Right-o, love.' Arthur took the baby, who scrunched up little nose and stirred in protest. Ronald Weasley let out a lusty little wail, and Arthur settled back with a long-suffering look of a man who'd lost a lot of sleep in the last several months. With at least her arms free, Molly lumbered off with the rest of the herd, shooing them into the kitchen with promises of treats if they'd only be good another hour.

'Remus, might I have a moment?'

Remus pushed to his feet and followed Dumbledore out. All the way out; they didn't pause in the house but went to the front garden, taking the outdoor path to the bench stationed at the side of the house overlooking the river. Dumbledore sat with his light houserobe gathered between his knees, and Remus smiled when the old man shucked his sandals and planted his wrinkled feet flat on the warm soil. Remus tilted his head up to the sunshine, closing his eyes to feel the drowsy heat on his eyelids.

'You look better,' Dumbledore said then, for him quite blunt indeed.

Remus let out a deep breath. 'I'm aware you sent me away for my health.'

'After endangering it.' Dumbledore did not look at him as they spoke, or, if he did, Remus wouldn't have known, for he kept his eyes firmly on the river. All was green and lovely and alive, and if he thought about it hard enough he wouldn't see the darkness hovering all about them.

'I have taken a great deal on myself,' Dumbledore murmured. 'Some of which was not mine to take. I hope you may at least believe that I--'

'You believed it was necessary,' Remus finished. 'I believe that you believe that.'

They sat in silence for a minute. Remus rubbed at his cuffs, deciding to roll them up. He rubbed his wrists. They had a bit of flesh to them, finally; Ermengardi had been at pains to fatten him up, since he'd started at Beauxbatons, and was proud of her success. They were kind to him and he'd even come to like teaching, but it only made it bittersweet. The Headmistress knew his secret, as did the senior staff, but some intelligent student would guess, some day, rumours would start to float about his monthly illnesses, and he'd have to leave. It wouldn't be different for wishing, and he didn't pretend otherwise.

'The end of the world,' Dumbledore mused.

'Pardon?'

'I've always detested that phrase. The end of the world.'

'I'd rather hope we get the end of the war before the end of the world.'

'In my admittedly lengthy experience, Remus, there's no such thing as endings. Should Voldemort fall, what next?'

At least he was cautious enough to make it 'should', but the careless lack of emphasis in that was more telling. Dumbledore had already moved past possibility and was counting on surety. He was keen-eyed, staring off over the river, staring into a tomorrow only he could see.

Molly rapped on the kitchen window to their right. She swung it open as their heads turned. 'Sirius just flooed,' she reported, her grin so wide it almost split her face. 'Healthy baby boy! Seven pounds exactly. Harry James.'

Something tight in Remus' stomach abruptly unwound. He dropped his head against the brick wall behind him as Dumbledore rose. Their voices seemed echoing and muffled, floating above him.

'Warmest congratulations,' Dumbledore said heartily. 'A strong name.'

'And Sirius said the Longbottoms made it through just hours earlier,' Arthur contributed, leaning out of the window with his arms on the sill. 'They're calling their lad Neville. Alice had a hard time of it, I gather, though Frank says she's all smiles now. Ten fingers, ten toes. All's right with the world, for once, eh?'

Remus abandoned the bench and clattered down the slate steps. He heard his name, Molly's startled voice, but it was only a momentary dash to the gate, and as soon as he was through it, Summerlea House vanished behind him, and he stood alone at the end of a small lane in Dunblane, shivering as if he'd been plunged into a winter snowstorm.

'Wait,' he called. 'Wait, I saw you.'

The tail of a wool coat flared as its wearer turned away. Remus ran after him, or meant to. He made it only a few steps more before he tripped. He caught himself, but in the glance down at what had flustered him, he lost track of the man in the coat, and though he stared about helplessly, there was no sign of life anywhere about, and he was smart enough not to further expose himself by racing off alone.

He knelt on the cobblestones and overturned the sprawled pile of books that had been left for him. They were old, the thin grey cloth of the covers worn, the pages coming unstitched. Penned to the first page in tidy quill marks were his own initials. It was the same in every book. They were his, or had been, before he'd given them as Christmas gifts to the werewolves in his camp, all of them dead now. The only book missing from the collection was the one he'd given to the man he'd been sure he'd seen watching him just now.

Arthur popped out of nowhere behind him, dropping a hand on his shoulder, wand at the ready. 'What is it, Remus? What are those?'

'A warning,' he said. 'I-- don't know. Maybe just--'

Arthur was grim. 'I think we'd better get you back to the Continent,' he said.

'He must have been watching me all along.' Remus gathered the books into his lap one by one. 'I thought he didn't know. Suspected, maybe...'

'Get inside the wards.'

'If he followed me here before--'

'Remus, get inside.' Arthur yanked him up by the warm, and Remus lost a pair of books as he stumbled upright. 'Petticoat Tails,' Arthur hissed at the house, which had hardly faded in before Arthur was shoving him at the gate. Dumbledore was awaiting them, Molly at his side, both armed. 'Get the children,' Arthur told his wife, leaving Remus and sprinting toward the house. Molly was only just behind him.

'He won't attack,' Remus said.

Dumbledore didn't put up his wand. 'I suppose I don't doubt that,' he replied slowly. 'But he may himself have been followed.'

'Headmaster, he--'

'Sometimes we never learn the truth. Sometimes there isn't a truth to be learnt.' Dumbledore sighed softly. 'Go inside, my boy. Let's leave this place in good order, for when we have opportunity to use it again. There will be time to think on it once we're all safely away.'

Remus looked over his shoulder. The street was empty now. He swallowed with difficulty. Dumbledore drew him along, gently despite the firm purpose in his tugs. When they passed the door Molly was ushering her children into the floo, wrapping the baby snugly in his sling over her chest. She spared no time on good-byes before she, too, was gone. Arthur gave them only a nod each before he followed.

'Now you,' Dumbledore told him, with only enough pause to conjure a satchel for the books, so Remus had his hands free for the floo powder. 'My regards to Madame Maxime. I'll pass your congratulations to the Potters and the Longbottoms.'

'Dumbledore--'

'Remus.' Dumbledore put two wizened hands on Remus' shoulders and held him. 'We're not at an end, yet, and I need you still. Be strong. Be stronger than you've ever been.'

He closed his eyes. Found his breath, found his balance. When he could agree without reservation, he nodded once. 'Call me and I will come,' he said.

'I know.' Dumbledore squeezed him tightly. 'I have always known.'

A moment later the floo spat him out in his small office at Beauxbatons. All was as he'd left it, though the house elves had been through to straighten his bed and remove all evidence of the meal he'd eaten alone the night before. Fresh flowers stood in a vase beneath his window, cracked to let in cool summer scents. Remus sat in his worn velvet chair, only then discovering his hand cramped tight to the strap of the satchel. He didn't let it go, not yet, but laid the other palm flat on the arm of his chair, anxiously finding the spots he always sought, where the velvet was threadbare and he could imagine the generations of men who'd occupied this office had rested. A bottle of wine, half-drunk and corked, stood at his elbow, and he thought of drinking it, gulping it, but didn't. He just sat, in this space that was his, for however long that would be, listening to the muted tick of the clock counting down the seconds til a prophecy met its fulfilment.

He hugged the books to his chest, and sat alone til purple twilight fell and tender summer night darkened his room, soft as a cloak all round him, waiting for sleep to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All chapter titles are drawn from The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. Heart is an intense examination of the loneliness of the human condition, both in its great thematic spread and its painful specifity in our quirks and foibles.


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